Ryan

On Ryan's Departure

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.

When Donald Trump came along, Ryan found himself a sudden symbol of the reviled "Republican establishment." Though the anti-Ryan vitriol faded after Steve Bannon's defenestration, he continued to be viewed with suspicion by the talk radio crowd and other arms of Trump Inc.

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.

The budget and the tax bill combined will leave us with a federal budget deficit in excess of $1 trillion in 2020 and beyond. Congressional Budget Office Director Keith Hall said that federal debt "is projected to be on a steadily rising trajectory throughout the decade." Under Republican guidance, the federal deficit will be roughly double what it was in the final year of the Obama administration. That is the reality of Speaker Ryan's tenure in the age of Trump.

We are not behaving as responsible adults. Our greatest political challenge is out-of-control debt. Our greatest social challenges are declining families, increasing dependency and eroding social cohesion. The debt could have been addressed by government. The other trends continue to degrade our culture, our economy and our personal lives. And the ascension of Trumpian politics — slashing, mendacious, corrupt and polarizing — aggravates everything that was already going wrong.
Paul Ryan didn't belong in Trump world. So much the worse for us.

Speaker Ryan will leave before turning 50. When he does, someone might well say of him these words Mark Twain said about Speaker of the House Thomas B Reed, one of the most powerful and successful Speakers who left the House over a disagreement with President McKinley over his war with Spain (Reed was opposed): "He was transparently honest and honorable, there was no furtiveness about him, and whoever came to know him trusted him and was not disappointed."

(From Charen and Barone, mostly Charen)