You couldn’t fault people a year and a half ago for thinking Mike Johnson (R-La.) didn’t stand a chance as House speaker. Even under the best of circumstances, the job is an impossible one. Throw in a one- to three-vote margin, and conditions are ripe for a leadership mutiny in the best of circumstances — and abject failure on the GOP’s agenda in the worst of them. But the young, once-unknown attorney from Louisiana has surprised everyone with his quiet, steady, and collaborative hand at the wheel. Now, the question for the man who’s undergone the biggest life makeover in Washington isn’t “Who is he?” but “How did he manage that?”

For Mike Johnson, there are no easy weeks. But he could be forgiven for thinking the last couple have been especially tough. Despite a string of dramatic wins on the most stressful votes in 2025 — his speakership, the continuing resolution to fund the government, and the House framework for a budget reconciliation bill — the highest stakes may have been cobbling together enough members to unlock the process that lets Republicans move on the president’s agenda. When the Senate’s version of reconciliation came back for approval, Johnson faced the very real prospect of losing a dozen or more conservatives on final passage. But instead of panicking, the speaker did what he does best: he listened.

A fiscal hawk at heart, Johnson understood that the House Freedom Caucus had plenty of legitimate reasons for withholding their support. As Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) warned, “… We’ve been granted an opportunity we may never get again. We must act like it.” The Senate’s promise to rein in spending meant nothing to them if the hard numbers weren’t in the bill. And until they got very public commitments that Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) would meet their $1.5 trillion threshold for cuts, there was no budging hardline conservatives.

Thanks to Johnson, the Freedom Caucus got those commitments in the form of an unexpected press conference with the two chambers’ leaders Thursday morning. The rest, as they say, is history.

The blockbuster accomplishment — his fourth such coup of 2025 — turned plenty of heads. Even liberal commentators, like former CNN and Washington Post personality Chris Cillizza called Johnson “the most underrated politician in America.” In a video about the speaker’s Thursday miracle, Cillizza said, “I have a confession to make. When Mike Johnson became speaker of the U.S. House, I didn’t know who he was. And I didn’t think he would last very long in the job. And you know what? Mike Johnson, good on you. You proved me, and I think a lot of other people very, very wrong.”

Like a lot of people, Cillizza shook his head at the three-seat majority in the House. “I thought to myself, no one can probably do this job effectively. No one on the Republican side, probably no one on the Democratic side. It’s basically impossible to govern. Like, it’s just really, really, really hard,” he explained. “I can’t emphasize that enough — how hard it is to make the House work when you have that tiny a majority. [Johnson is] overseeing this really fractious group of House Republicans where there are moderates who are trying to get elected and reelected in New England. And there’s this hardcore Trump base. And then there are the fiscal hawks, right?”

This bill is even more politically fraught, he continued, “because it’s gigantic, has lots of detractors. You add one thing, you lose some people on the other end. You make those people happy, you lose people on this end. Again, a three-seat majority. Very, very, very hard to do. And you can disagree with the agenda that Mike Johnson represents,” Cillizza said, “but my point is the job of speaker is to pass legislation that your president and your members are supportive of. And yet the bespeckled guy from Louisiana that nobody had heard of two years ago got it done. And I think you have to take a minute and say, ‘Give this guy credit.’ … He’s done a much better job than I think anyone thought he might reasonably do in these circumstances.”

Quena González, FRC’s senior director of Government Affairs, points out that “people are used to Congress being ruled by kingmakers, not served by statesmen.” Time alone will tell if Speaker Johnson rises to the level of a statesman, he said, “but his colleagues already know that he is a man of principle and integrity who has, as he promised he would when he was elected speaker, decentralized the power of his office in favor brokering transparent deals in public rather than making decisions privately and foisting them on colleagues through a system of favoritism.”

One of the things that speaks volumes about Johnson, González observed, is his willingness to invite critics to the table “to contribute substantive ideas and policies to the debate.” “He has included people from every wing of the fractured Republican caucus to collaborate. And he has, as he said he would, slowly but steadily, begun to turn the ship of state away from massive, pork-laden budget bills and appropriations omnibuses that used special-interest fat to grease the wheels more and more toward regular-order budget and spending bills.” The process has looked ugly, González added, “because Americans aren’t used to seeing it as transparently, and Congress isn’t used to making the sausage in public, but it’s a healthy and, Lord willing, healing process.”

Maybe to others, the speaker’s success has been unexpected, improbable even. But to those who’ve known him longest, the only surprise has been his ability to overcome so many unbeatable odds. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, who knew and mentored Johnson back when the future speaker was in law school, talked with the GOP leader about how he juggles the competing voices and demands when he’s navigating critical moments on the Hill.

“There’s more to it,” Perkins prodded on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill.” Johnson smiled before replying, “[It takes] a lot of faith, a lot of prayer, a lot of patience. You know,” he said, “This is really high stakes stuff. And the ‘one, big, beautiful bill’ we’re talking about is arguably one of the most consequential pieces of legislation, one of the most comprehensive pieces of legislation that Congress has ever dealt with in its entire history since 1789,” the speaker underscored. “So we don’t take this lightly,” but, the speaker said, by the same token, “we don’t carry the burden as a heavy weight. I mean, we understand the historic significance of the moment we’re in, and you’ve just got to keep a steady hand through it.”

“I’m blessed in that regard,” the speaker emphasized. “I have a deep faith and … we seek [God’s] wisdom and guidance for every day. But also [with] my colleagues … it’s a good group of folks. They have very different interests, very different ideas, very different priorities among them. But at the end of the day, I’m confident each time that we can get everybody together.” As Americans witnessed last week, “Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to do that — a lot of listening, a lot of letting people emote and sometimes get angry and work through five stages of grief and all that. But we get to the point of consensus. And that’s the beauty of a deliberative public body like this. The Congress of the United States is the greatest deliberative body in the world. We ought to act like it, and we try to do that every day.”

But there’s something different about Johnson’s leadership style, Perkins insisted. “It’s a difficult process, but … you allow all the members of Congress to have a voice in the process and to reach [a] consensus that everyone can live with.” It’s not always been that way, he reminded people.

“It takes a lot of patience,” the speaker repeated. “And you can’t get angry. You can’t take anything personal[ly]. People get very emotional because the stakes are so high. … But that’s part of it. So I don’t get rattled by that. I don’t take any of the barbs personally. They come all the time. That’s sort of part of the job, but you just keep your eye on the prize, and that’s what we do,” he said simply. “I know that our mission is so critical for the future of this country. … And so, we don’t really have the luxury of allowing emotions to get in the way of this. We just have to get the mission accomplished.”

As for his underdog status, Johnson said, “I’m grateful that we’re continuing to do that and defy the odds. In some ways, it’s a benefit to be constantly underestimated. It allows us to get it done and surprise everybody, and that’s fine. And then, frankly, between you and me, then God gets the glory for it, right?”