On Wednesday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) gave his farewell speech on the floor of Congress. Ryan has come in for incredible levels of criticism over his handling of the House and his off-again, on-again relationship with President Trump — but his farewell speech addressed themes that have run throughout his tenure in the House of Representatives: the lack of seriousness in addressing policy issues, the unwillingness to stare real problems in the face, and the substitution of political partisanship for problem-solving. Ryan was always miscast as Speaker of the House; indeed, he was miscast as a member of Congress in the first place. Congress is a place for bargaining, not for ideas. That is, in and of itself, somewhat tragic. And the obvious tension in Ryan’s career was exposed by the fact that Congress it itself nearly unworkable.
In his farewell address, Ryan focused on a few themes. First, the greatness of America. Ryan stated:
What a country, where someone of an unassuming Midwest upbringing gets the chance to be a part of all of this. Where you can pursue whatever your passion is, wherever it takes you. That’s the American Idea, isn’t it? The condition of your birth isn’t your destiny. Your struggle isn’t your destiny. It is part of our journey.
Then Ryan moved onto the heart of his speech: the disconnect between what politics should be and what it has become. Labeling himself a “policy” guy, Ryan stated that he had advanced some key policies in his role as Speaker: economic growth, military restoration, sanctions on our enemies, regulatory reform, criminal justice reform. Ryan rightly pointed out that the House had passed 1,175 bills, “more than half of them with bipartisan support.” But in an implicit rebuke to our current politics, Ryan explained that criticism has taken the place of problem-solving:
The state of politics these days, though, is another question, and frankly one I don’t have an answer for. We have a good sense of what our politics should look like. A great clash of ideas. A civil, passionate discourse through which we debate and resolve our differences. … But today, too often, genuine disagreement quickly gives way to intense distrust. We spend far more time trying to convict one another than we do developing our own convictions. Being against someone has more currency than being for anything. Each of us has found ourselves operating on the wrong side of this equation from time to time. … We default to lazy litmus tests and shopworn denunciations. It is just emotional pabulum fed from a trough of outrage. It is exhausting. It saps meaning from our politics. And it discourages good people from pursuing public service.
All of this is eminently correct. And Ryan correctly diagnosed the problem, too: a lack of social fabric. The thinning of that social fabric, Ryan states, has “deep roots.” But Ryan properly recognized that politics offers no real solutions to the restoration of that fabric:
So … how do we get back to aspiration and inclusion, where we start with humility, and seek to build on that? I don’t know the answer to that. What I offer today instead is something to keep in mind as we all try to navigate through this moment. Our culture is meant to be shaped not by our political institutions, but by the mediating institutions of civil society, of the community. These are the places where we come together with people of different backgrounds — churches, charities, teams, PTA meetings. It is where we build up our social capital, that currency which keeps us rooted to where we live, and how we live with one another. Rediscovering that human connection is one lane on the road back to aspiration and inclusion as the guiding influences in public life.
Ryan returned to themes that have animated his career — focus on reduction of poverty through rethinking how we fight poverty (“It begins with realizing that the best results come from within communities, where solutions are tailored and targeted for people’s needs. This battle will be won soul-to-soul and eye-to-eye”); focus on entitlement reform (“I acknowledge plainly that my ambitions for entitlement reform have outpaced the political reality and I consider this our greatest unfinished business … Ultimately, solving this problem will require a greater degree of political will than exists today. I regret that”); fixing immigration (“The right mix of solutions is there. Border security and interior enforcement, for starters. But also a modernization of our visa system”).
In the end, the way we view Ryan is an indicator of all that is broken in our politics. There simply shouldn’t be such a stark division between idea men and policy implementation. But there is. And that gap will widen as the social fabric crumbles, and as it becomes more and more lucrative to attribute the worst motives to our ideological opponents, rather than seeking to win them over. Ryan concluded:
For each of the challenges I have discussed here today, there are people of goodwill in both parties who are ready and willing to take action. Everyone doesn’t need to agree on everything, and everyone doesn’t need to disagree on everything, either. All you need is enough people of good faith willing to take up an idea. That’s a good start. … Hone your ability to advance ideas. Sit down with people who know more about something than you do, listen, keep at it. Invest in the process.
Will Ryan’s words hit home? Only if we, as a broader society, attempt to reinvigorate our sense of the eternal values that brought us together as a nation in the first place. And that work starts outside Congress. It starts with us.
