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After a little more than three weeks, House Republicans have finally elected a speaker. He's Mike Johnson, first elected to the House in 2016 from a district in northwest Louisiana. He's almost unknown to the public, has a right-wing voting record, and has been a supporter of Donald Trump. He grills witnesses effectively but calmly, with no visible anger.
How he does as speaker, whether he moves appropriations bills as promised, his skill negotiating with a Democratic president and Senate — all this is obviously unknown as I write. Unknown as well is whether his election with no dissenting Republican votes could help restore a political norm that has been eroded steadily in recent years.
The longest speakerless intervals in the House came in the middle of the 19th century, as the Whig Party was dying out, the Know Nothing and Republican parties were founded, and the Democratic Party split between South and North.
In 1855, it took the House two months and 133 ballots to elect a Know Nothing speaker (a former Democrat, he later became a Republican), and in 1859 nearly two months and 44 ballots to elect a Whig (who was defeated in his home district in 1860).
The norm of all party members supporting the speaker chosen by secret ballot in conference (the Republican term) or caucus (the Democratic term) grew up in the stabler partisan environment emerging from the Civil War.
Speakers' powers were whittled back in the 1910 revolt against Speaker Joseph Cannon; the progressive rebels, passed over for chairmanships for a dozen years, thought the fair way to allot them was by seniority, a system which by the 1950s weakened speakers and empowered anti-civil rights Southern Democrats.
That was reversed when House Democrats led by Phillip Burton in 1974 and House Republicans led by Newt Gingrich in 1994 instituted the election of committee chairmen by members and party leaders. Before those changes, there had been little point in withholding votes from speakers, and in any case Democrats won at least 243 seatS in every House election from 1958 through 1992.
But in the 15 House elections starting in 1994, only once has a party won more than 243 seats.
Thus in 1998, when Republicans lost rather than gained seats, a few holdouts said they wouldn't vote again for Newt Gingrich, and after a memorable four-year speakership, he retired.
Among Democrats, violations of the norm became more common as some members sought to set themselves apart from the party's liberal stands. But with the steely discipline exercised in her record 19 years as Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi kept the numbers of norm violators down.
So last January, enough Republicans felt free to vote against the conference's clear choice, McCarthy, to deny him the speakership for 14 ballots. And in October, backbencher Matt Gaetz, with no non-personal discernible grievance, felt free to move to oust him as speaker, and with seven other Republicans and every Democrat, he did.
Each of the conference's choices either bowed out or got fewer votes on each floor vote.
Evidently, this spectacle of disarray prompted second thoughts. Mike Johnson, with a serious but not angry demeanor and with few enemies accumulated in his three terms, won not just a majority in conference but also got assurance no one would vote against him on the floor. No Republican did, for the first time in a dozen years.
So has the norm been restored?