The Great Appeaser

By Jonah Goldberg

Friday, September 04, 2026

 

If I release a rabid monkey on a leash into a museum, and it smashes vases, bites tourists, and flings poo at the Mona Lisa, I can’t claim I’m not responsible when I choose not to tug on the monkey’s chain—especially when I tell the monkey lovers: “A vote for the monkey is a vote for me and my party.”

 

Let me explain.

 

The other day, CNN’s Manu Raju asked House Speaker Mike Johnson whether voters should hold Johnson partly responsible for the Iran war dragging on.

 

“On Iran, you said repeatedly that this war was going to be over soon. You said that this would be a temporary blip on gas prices,” Raju said. Six months later “[p]eople are getting hurt still at the pump. Should the American people not also judge you on your projections here that were clearly off base?”

 

Johnson replied: “Manu, that is one of the stupidest questions you’ve ever asked.”

 

“Why is that stupid?” Raju asked.

 

“I have nothing to do with the prosecution of the war across the globe,” Johnson insisted.

 

After some crosstalk, Raju replied, “You are—you are selling this to the American public, are you not?”

 

“So, should the House speaker be held responsible for the duration of a military conflict around the globe?” Johnson responded. “You answer that question.”

 

Raju didn’t, but I’ll take a stab.

 

There are a couple of ways to come at this. Let’s start with the constitutional stuff.

 

The official—congressionally authorized—Constitution Annotated has a section called “Overview of Congressional War Powers.”

 

The mere fact that the Constitution grants war powers is kind of inconvenient for Johnson, but we’ll get back to that. Among the powers granted to Congress are the powers to declare war, raise and support armies, provide a navy, make rules governing the armed forces, regulate captures, and—most consequentially in the modern era—appropriate or withhold the money necessary to continue wars. I’m open to some nuance at the margins, but broadly speaking, these powers are solely granted to Congress.

 

Now, it’s certainly true that Congress has been delegating a lot of its authorities to the executive branch for a very long time. But Johnson is very, very fond of touting himself as not just an expert on the Constitution, but a faithful servant of it. “My background is in interpretation of the Constitution, and I am a textualist,” he told The New Yorker in 2020. “We all should have an interest in these very specific clauses of the Constitution being followed.”

 

As part of his explanation for why Joe Biden was “the worst president in American history,” he complained that as speaker, he was denied access to the president to consult on national security.

 

“I became speaker in October 2023, and there were all sorts of big national security concerns going on,” he told Bari Weiss in 2025. “I started requesting a meeting with the president because, you know, I’m kind of old school. I’m a constitutional law guy. The speaker of the House should be able to talk to the president, especially in times of great national interest and calamity.”

 

The “Rule of Law” section on Johnson’s official website says, “Each branch of government must adhere to the Constitution … Congress must faithfully perform its constitutional responsibility of oversight.”

 

So much for his own stated views of his responsibilities. And I think we’ve covered the text of the Constitution well enough. Let’s move on to history and tradition, as the “old constitutional law nerds” might say.

 

Henry Clay was one of the greatest statesmen of the 19^th century: He served as a senator, representative, secretary of state, and speaker of the House. He helped create both the Whig and Republican parties. He was so respected that he was elected straight to the speakership, despite being a freshman. He was only 34. As speaker, he—at least as much as President James Madison—drove the public effort to declare war on the British. He seeded the relevant committees with fellow war hawks, and under his leadership Congress declared war for the first time.

 

Fast forward to 1847, the now elder statesman Clay was opposed and horrified by President James Polk’s war with Mexico. He explained that while the War of 1812 had been “a War of National defence, required for the vindication of the National rights and honor, and demanded by the indignant voice of the people. … How totally variant is the present War! This is no War of Defence, but one unnecessary and of offensive aggression.” Sound familiar?

 

Now, Polk did get a declaration of war (of sorts) from Congress, but what offended Clay and many others was that Polk had, in their view, started a war and then got Congress to ratify a fait accompli.

 

Clay argued that it didn’t really matter how we got into the war; Congress still had a lot of say about how the war should be conducted, what the war aims should be, and how it would be paid for. Alas, that doesn’t sound very familiar.

 

“Either Congress, or the President, must have the right of determining upon the objects for which a War shall be prosecuted,” Clay said. “There is no other alternative. If the president possess it and may prosecute it for objects against the will of Congress, where is the difference between our Free Government and that of any other nation which may be governed by an absolute Czar, Emperor, or King?” (Emphasis added.)

 

He continued:

 

…in expounding the constitution, we ought to keep constantly in view the nature and structure of our free Government, and especially the great object of the Convention in taking the war-making power out of the hands of a single man and placing it in the safer custody of the representatives of the whole nation. The desirable reconciliation between the two powers is effected by attributing to Congress the right to declare what shall be the objects of war, and to the President the duty of endeavoring to obtain those objects by the direction of the national force and by diplomacy.

 

…

 

I conclude, therefore, Mr. President and fellow-citizens, with entire confidence, that Congress has the right, either at the beginning or during the prosecution of any War, to decide the objects and purposes for which it was proclaimed, or for which it ought to be continued. And, I think it is the duty of Congress by some deliberate and authentic act, to declare for what objects the present War shall no longer be prosecuted.

 

History and tradition don’t begin and end with Clay, of course.

 

In 1983, Speaker Tip O’Neill personally negotiated with President Ronald Reagan on the size and duration of a Marine deployment to Lebanon. O’Neill had told Reagan, “No way, no way, will I give you a blank check.” In 1991, Speaker Tom Foley insisted that President George H.W. Bush had to come to Congress and ask permission for the first Gulf War, and Bush agreed. In 2002, Speaker Dennis Hastert and Minority Leader Dick Gephardt sponsored the authorization of the use of force in Iraq again.

 

The Spanish-American war is a fun exception to the point I’ve been making, but not in a way that helps Johnson. The Constitution, after all, doesn’t grant the war powers of Congress to the speaker, it grants them to Congress. Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed—dubbed “Czar Reed” for his tight control of the House—was opposed to war with Spain. The problem? The actual Congress wasn’t. He—and the president—were ultimately forced to follow Congress’ lead.

 

Let’s just say that Johnson’s incredulity is not credible coming out of the mouth of a “textualist” Constitution-thumper.

 

So let’s offer a political answer to Johnson’s question. Recently, the speaker was plugging next week’s “midterm convention”: “The president’s going to look right in the camera and say, ‘I am on the ballot,’ okay, because even though his name isn’t, right, his administration, his legacy, the American First agenda is, we’ve got to get people to turn out.”

 

So, which is it? Is the president’s conduct of the war—and everything else—the standard by which voters should hold Congress accountable or not? If the speaker and the House shouldn’t be “held responsible” for the war and its economic consequences, why say that this congressional election is a referendum on Trump?

 

If Johnson and the Republicans have turned themselves into a rubber stamp for whatever Trump does, then they are politically responsible for what Trump does. They can’t have it both ways. They can’t refuse to use even the slightest bit of their constitutional authority—which is another way of describing a clear refusal to live up to their constitutional obligations—and then say they have no accountability for what the president lawlessly or unconstitutionally does.

 

Johnson the “constitutionalist” is simply a fraud, and Johnson the politician is simply a coward. He wants Republicans to be a mere extension of Trump’s Caesarian authority when it comes to MAGA voters, and he wants to be exonerated wholly from the consequences of that choice in the eyes of every other voter.

 

Clay was known as “the Great Compromiser” because he expertly used his power and knowledge of the Constitution to defuse sectional crises. Johnson should go down in history as the Great Appeaser, because no speaker in history has so self-gelded the job and institution.

 

I really wanted to work in some wordplay about how we’ve gone from the statesmanlike “feats of Clay,” to Johnson’s “feet of clay.” The problem is that “feet of clay” comes from the Bible and is supposed to mean “a hidden, serious weakness or character flaw in someone who is greatly admired, respected, or powerful.” And that’s the hitch. Not only is Johnson not greatly admired or respected, his weaknesses and character flaws are not a concealed bug. They are the defining feature of his speakership.