EDITORIAL: This is what leadership looks like

‘Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never break.’ — Albert Camus

To extremists on both ends of the political spectrum, compromise is a dirty word. But to people living in the real world, not some idealistic bubble, compromise is key to getting important things done.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana: Thank you.

Thank you for keeping your priorities straight, preferring, as you stated, to send bullets rather than American boys — including those from Idaho — to Ukraine.

Thank you for thinking for yourself rather than hopping aboard the Group Think Express departing hourly from the far right depot in Congress.

Thank you, Speaker Johnson, for demonstrating one of the finest of American traits: Hard work. In reaching your decision about support for Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel and Palestinians, you put in long hours of research, tapping into the deep veins of expert knowledge and analysis rather than the thin skin and thick skulls of some pundits and politicos. 

Thank you for persisting when it would have been so much easier to just look the other way.

Thank you for breaking through the wall separating the left and the right for the good of the nation.

Thank you for breaking through the wall separating the left and the right for the survival of rule by democracy.

Most of all, Speaker Johnson, thank you for your courage, for putting your promising political future in peril from shrill, shallow-thinking wrecking balls like Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“I know that so many of us are proud of Mike Johnson and we really stand with him, so he shouldn’t be fearful [of ouster],” said Rep. Jen Kiggans, a Republican from Virginia. “A good leader isn’t fearful of what people think. They always are there to do the right thing, and he did that in this situation.”

“The fact that Speaker Johnson found the courage to do the right thing — to do his job — and remain true to his word means a good deal to a legislator like me,” said Rep. Hillary Scholten, a Michigan Democrat. “Trust is foundational, and it’s something we absolutely did not have with Speaker McCarthy. At the end of the day, I know that the constituents in my district want a functional Congress, not more political infighting.”

Republicans and Democrats working together, with courage, with integrity, and with determination. Hearts that can bend will change the world for the better.