Thoughts on Paul Ryan's announcement

For starters, there are more stupid takes on it than accurate ones.

The other day I saw a particularly stupid left-of-center take at Huffington Post. Well, actually, maybe calling it stupid is a bit unfair, given that it was explicitly based on the general leftist premise that federal government programs are inherently good, as is a pervasive federal role in the lives of US citizens generally. Of course, someone coming from such a worldview is going to see the agenda Ryan has had throughout his career as dastardly.

But Trumpists bring to the table their own kind of stupid:

Laura Ingraham celebrated Ryan’s exit on her Fox show last night, calling it proof that the “GOP establishment” is “out of steam” and finally yielding to Trump.

How "establishment" is a guy who has repeatedly drawn up budgets that try to at least start addressing the looming debt-and-deficit dilemma, and the reason for it (doing nothing to restructure Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid)?

Trumpists would do well to remember the vitriol this effort earned him from the Left:

Ryan's departure will not be mourned by Democrats or Trump loyalists. The Democrats caricatured Ryan as the goon throwing Granny in her wheelchair off a cliff. They actually ran TV ads with a Ryan lookalike. Barack Obama singled him out for scorn at a White House meeting, claiming later that he was unaware Ryan was in the front row.

So he came in for derision from both sides.

This was his reward for attempting to drag his party, and the country, toward a grown-up reckoning with our debt. Nearly single-handedly, Paul Ryan had managed to put tackling entitlements on the national agenda. As chairman of the budget committee, he convinced his colleagues to endorse modest entitlement reform. As he kept trying to explain, making incremental reforms now -- with no changes for current beneficiaries or those in their 50s -- can prevent drastic shortfalls and extreme benefit cuts that will be necessary in just 16 years, when Social Security is depleted. The outlook is even worse for Medicare and Medicaid.

 

 Then along came the Very Stable Genius.

Mr. Shoot-From-The-Hip flatly declared that he would not be part of any attempt to make these restructuring moves. And the crickets emanating from his camp sealed the deal that his slavish devotees had abandoned any claim to being conservatives.

But since their man won the nomination and the presidency, they were in a position to claim the conservative mantle anyway, thereby causing massive cognitive distortion among the general populace:

Most of the press coverage in the past 24 hours says matter-of-factly that the party has moved to the right. That’s not quite correct. The party has moved toward Trump, who has redefined modern conservatism in his more nationalistic mold and made what was historically a movement of ideas into, mostly, a cult of personality. “Ryan’s retirement means America no longer has a conservative party,” observes The Post’s Editorial Board. “Republicans are decreasingly conservative and increasingly reactionary.”

The conventional wisdom when Trump took office was that Ryan would be in the driver’s seat on policymaking because the new president didn’t have many core convictions. While the speaker has played a hugely consequential role at shaping what the tax overhaul looked like, for example, the chattering class underestimated Trump’s penchant for disruption and domination.

My surprise about the announcement has pretty much worn off, as I reflect on Ryan's character. A devout Christian (Roman Catholic) who loves his roles as father and husband, and who retains deep ties to his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, and who knew from the get-go that he was dispositionally ill-suited to the Speaker position, he's just had it.

That's pretty much the motivation of all the House conservative retirement announcements. I know it is in the case of Trey Gowdy.

It's a depressing commentary on the state of post-American politics and governance that conservative principles get little to no airing inside the Beltway, but let us remember that one core conservative principle is squarely facing the world as it is as the starting point for applying our ideals.

It will be interesting to see what he chooses for a next step. I wouldn't be surprised if it was some kind of think-tank path.

In any event, the record shows that he was an agent of common sense, principle and robust thinking at a time when those traits were increasingly at a premium.