Mike Johnson establishes himself as a titan of Congress with aid package vote

A miracle just happened in Washington, D.C.

In an attempt to save the second-largest country in Europe from being conquered, 101 Republican members of the House joined all 210 Democrats to pass a foreign aid package that includes $61 billion for Ukraine.

By risking career suicide and orchestrating this messy, contentious process to a largely bipartisan result, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has established himself as a titan of Congress who for one moment, however brief, released what Abraham Lincoln called in his first inaugural address, “the better angels of our nature.”

The angels of bipartisanship have made appearances in the halls of Congress before, at key moments in our history.

Sen. Arthur Vandenberg (R-Mich.), as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joined forces with Democratic President Harry S. Truman to give birth to NATO and the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe. The creation of Social Security in 1935 was a bipartisan achievement of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress, and the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act in 1956 was backed by President Dwight Eisenhower and members of both parties.

Presidents John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, strongly supported by Republican and Democratic legislators, forged historic nuclear arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were victories of the civil rights movement backed by a Democratic president and many Republicans in Congress.               

In the 1980s and 1990s, the unlikely team of conservative Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah) and liberal Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy (Mass.) tabled their extreme ideological differences to engineer striking bipartisan achievements like the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. In the 1990s, the alliance of President Bill Clinton and Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich created a process of bipartisan action on key issues, as did a similar partnership between President Reagan and Speaker “Tip” O’Neill (D-Mass.) the decade before.

In 2018, lawmakers from both parties enacted the STOP School Violence Act to issue grants to school violence prevention programs around the country, a law that was praised by both Sandy Hook Promise and the National Rifle Association. And in 2022, Congress passed a burst of bipartisan laws on global competitiveness, infrastructure, initial aid to Ukraine and veterans’ health care.

Today, in an age of political passions inflamed by scorched-earth social media combat, the latest Ukraine vote presided over by Speaker Johnson reminds us of the true potential of “American exceptionalism” as the essential world power that can act as a force for justice, freedom, human rights and inspiration in the world.

It also echoes the words of Lincoln’s inaugural: “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.” 

Lincoln was right. The enemy is not us. In most cases, the enemies are not our fellow Americans, but those we share with people around the world — dictatorship, military aggression, ignorance, disinformation, disease, hunger, terrorism, poverty and discrimination.

Whatever the future may bring for Speaker Johnson, the American people yearn for forceful, effective bipartisan action — on immigration, the economy, family security, education, energy, health care and a host of other issues.

It is time for America to fully unleash the angels of bipartisanship. Our greatest moments as a nation come when we act together as Americans to help build a stronger nation and a better world.

William Doyle is author of “Titan of the Senate: Orrin Hatch and the Once and Future Golden Age of Bipartisanship” published by Center Street Books.