First published in The Hill.

After weeks of infighting, backstabbing and open hostility toward one another, House Republicans finally elected a Speaker, Trump-supporting Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La).

We don’t know if Speaker Johnson will have any more success corralling his conference than Speaker McCarthy did. As the voting wound down, one Republican member, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), expressed his skepticism this way: “Frankly, it doesn’t matter who the Speaker is, because if we can’t govern as a group, as a conference, it doesn’t matter.”

One thing, however, is certain: the damage to the country. The chaos in the House this fall is just one more log on the fire of Americans’ growing cynicism about government — all of it.

Read the full article in The Hill.