Paul Ryan is a man for all seasons. He is one of the ablest defenders of Republican policy ideas, and he's become better at selling them as good for all American constituencies, not just Republican ones. But Ryan is much more than a front man. He is more boldly ideological than many of the party's ideologically motivated backbenchers, even while he's a more effective deal-maker than some of its sell-out-and-govern wing.
There are, in other words, reasons why Ryan should and shouldn't be speaker of the House. And that is why he is trying to extract unprecedented concessions from Republicans before he agrees to run for speaker, including support from all the caucuses within the GOP's House majority.
Ryan is a right-wing dreamer and visionary. He's the guy who — oh, heavens — openly admires the books of the radical libertarian Ayn Rand. Her novel Atlas Shrugged became required reading in his office. And he has occasionally shown her influence by rhetorically dividing America into makers and takers.
Ryan has consistently and — in what is far more troubling to other politicians — publicly outlined federal budgets that actually resolve the disparity between the proportion of GDP Americans want to spend on themselves (roughly 25 percent) and the GDP level at which Americans roughly are willing to be taxed (19 or 20 percent). This is the great knot of American politics, the one that is sent over to prestige commissions, where grandees pretend to untie it. Ryan, from his perch at the House Ways and Means Committee, instead makes the knot disappear. He dramatizes this by making spending go down and economic growth go up with the wave of his hand. His candor, particularly on the spending side of the equation, has earned him a kind of grudging respect from the Obama administration.
And yet, for all that, the one group within the GOP that is having trouble accepting Ryan's leadership is the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus. That's because Ryan is also a political bullet-biter and a compromiser. When President George W. Bush was looking to neutralize Democratic attacks on Republicans ahead of his re-election campaign in 2004, he pushed for Medicare Part D, an expansion of the gerontocratic welfare state that ideological conservatives hated. Ryan was one of the men whipping the votes for it. He was also one of just 20 Republican House members to vote for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, aka the big bailouts for Wall Street.
Just a few years later, Ryan was preaching against crony capitalism. Where were you, Ryan, when these issue was live and up for a vote?
Ryan's libertarian streak also makes him more open to keeping the flow of immigration into the United States high, a position that sets him at odds with the restrictionists in his party. And this is the very issue that contributed to the deep mistrust that surrounded the departing John Boehner, who seemed more embarrassed by his party's backbench then he was angry at President Obama's series of executive power-grabs on the issue.
On the one hand, Ryan's combination of ideological zeal, policy creativity, pragmatism, and salesmanship make him very attractive as a speaker. But conservatives may be right to be wary.
The total record suggests that Ryan's conservatism becomes purer and more idealistic only when the ability to implement policy drops to zero, i.e. under a Democratic administration, or when stuffing Christmas stockings to interns. When a Republican is in the White House, Ryan is suddenly more aware of the political costs of uncompromising principle. Ryan puts the ideas out there and gets credit for seriousness, even if it does some damage to his party's reputation. But when the rubber hits the road, Ryan's the rubber stamp in the hands of a compromised Republican administration.
And the speaker's job is difficult beyond that. Boehner was a hard worker on behalf of the conference and a good fund-raiser. Ryan's conditions include an exemption from fund-raising, which means he is demanding a pledge of fealty to him while intending to do none of the grunt work. Instead of keeping the party united through sheer effort, Ryan seems to wish to achieve this by sheer high regard.
But demanding trust is a funny way to earn it. Ryan should tread carefully. He poses as being all things to all men. He is a policy nerd for the wonks, a calculating realist for the pollsters, and an idealist for the right wing. But in Washington, to be one man's friend is to declare yourself the enemy of another. Being everyone's friend at once is even more dangerous for a speaker.
