Little more than 100 days into his tenure, the speaker who was handed an impossible job has only made it more difficult for himself, baffling his colleagues.
When one of the most stinging defeats of his short tenure arrived on Tuesday, Speaker Mike Johnson had put himself front and center in the House chamber, standing in front of the speaker’s ceremonial chair on the upper tier of the rostrum to gavel it down.
As Republicans tanked their own bid to impeach Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, Mr. Johnson, who minutes before had been buttonholing holdouts on the House floor, was the face of the failure, a slightly panicked look on his face and his cheeks flushed as he announced the loss.
Then the House moved on to a second vote Mr. Johnson had orchestrated, on a $17.6 billion aid package for Israel that he knew would not muster the votes it needed to pass.
It also failed.
