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On April 20th Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, allowed the House to vote on military aid to Ukraine that needed it desperately. It passed overwhelmingly.

Marjorie Taylor Greene now wants to have him ousted as Speaker for allowing the vote, but that’s a story for another day.

For context, Johnson had sat on the Senate passed version for six months as Putin’s Russian army continues to bomb cities and towns in Ukraine killing children, men and women indiscriminately in his illegal and inhumane war.

Johnson should have taken action when the need for additional aid first emerged, but in the end he did the right thing, finally understanding that the future of all democracies is being affected by what is happening in Ukraine.

But the person who deserves the real credit for Johnson’s decision to allow a vote is President Biden, something you heard little about from the mainstream media.

What he did to change Johnson’s mind is an incredible story of the kind of leadership we seldom see in politics.

On April 24, Arlette Saenz of CNN (a network no friend to Biden) wrote about what President Biden did in an article entitled, “How the White House convinced Mike Johnson to back Ukraine Aid.” She describes it better than I can.

“For months, President Joe Biden and his team pressed the case for additional aid both publicly and privately, leaning into courting Johnson – whose young speakership was under pressure from his right flank – behind the scenes through White House meetings, phone calls and detailed briefings on the battlefield impacts, administration officials said.

“Biden directed his team to use every opportunity possible to lay out the consequences of inaction directly to Johnson. That included warnings of what it would mean not just for Ukraine, but also Europe and the US, if Russian President Vladimir Putin were to succeed, administration officials said.

“The president specifically urged his team to lean into providing a full intelligence picture of Ukraine’s battlefield situation in their conversations with the speaker and his staff as well as discussing the national security implications for the US, officials said. That push played out over the next six months – starting with a Situation Room briefing one day after Johnson became speaker.

“Another early directive from the president to his team –  try to refrain from targeted attacks against Johnson as much as possible and instead focus on the greater need for Republicans to act, hoping to give more space for productive conversations.

“’He just kept saying, ‘Keep talking. Keep working,’ Saenz added, quoting Steve Ricchetti, counselor to Biden, ‘You know, keep finding ways to resolve differences. And that was his direction’.”

What Biden did sounds so normal and common-sensical for a leader trying to get something important done, but in today’s divided politics it is unusual and rare,

He showed precisely the kind of leadership we need in a President, but how many Americans care?

It’s a serious question. Polls, wrong as I hope they are, continue to show that almost half the country wants Donald Trump to be President again. How many Americans honestly believe what Biden did Trump could do, or would, if he could?

There is no doubt about the answer. He wouldn’t because he can’t. It’s who he is. Trump has no clue about the art of the deal he claims to be know about for the simple reason that he doesn’t have the temperament to make any kind of deal about anything.

Winning is the only deal he knows, and he is willing to say and do anything to achieve it. He made no deals when he was in office. He achieved nothing but a tax cut for the rich that added more than a trillion dollars to the national debt.

Yet, half the country seems to favor Trump over Biden, which means they apparently don’t care about  competent, sensible presidential leadership that gets things done.

Pretty incredible, when you think about it, for a country that thinks it’s the envy of the world.