It’s fitting that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced his retirement during what was a very disturbing week in the White House, even by the chaotic standards that have prevailed under President Trump. Some suggested Ryan’s leaving means the Republican party has now become a Trumpist party. But that happened long ago. Ryan’s departure is not some kind of inflection point; it is an exclamation point.
Ryan is leaving for a variety of reasons. Anyone who has known him even casually believes him when he says he wants to spend more time with his family. Ryan would prefer, as well, to spend his time on policy innovation, rather than dealmaking. Even in better times that would have made the speakership an awkward fit. But the position has evolved into a job with virtually all downside. At a time of extraordinary polarization between the two parties and internecine conflict inside the GOP, the House speaker is the face of a deeply unpopular institution, with limited power to change it.
But he’s also leaving because of Trump, with whom he has never been comfortable. When Ryan waited to endorse Trump two years ago, he wasn’t being cute. He was wrestling with the implications of what he was expected to do as the highest-profile Republican officeholder in the country. If he had refused to support Trump, he would have split his party, angering many of his own members and defying the will of an increasing number of Republican voters. By endorsing Trump, Ryan believed he could at least prevent the ascension of a pro-Trump successor, perhaps shape what was to come, and mitigate the worst damage of the Trump-GOP marriage.
The GOP establishment was always going to adapt to Trump. It’s what they do. If you are a transactionalist, it’s no big deal to move from free trade to tariffs, from an insistence that character matters to arguments that it’s irrelevant, from a pose of Tea Party fiscal conservatism to an embrace of profligacy. Ryan has never been that sort.
He was always more a creature of the conservative movement than of GOP politics. His departure punctuates the eclipse of that movement within the party.
Here’s the irony: As Trump consolidates his hold on the party, he’s losing his grip on the presidency. Even the strongest supporters of the president now quietly acknowledge fears of what comes next. White House staffers whisper that their boss appears increasingly unhinged. As one prominent Trump supporter recently put it to me: “It’s falling apart.” It’s a view echoed by a former top administration official, who said this week: “It’s never been worse. Nobody knows what to do.”
The details beggar the imagination. On April 9, Trump held a meeting to consider how he might deepen U.S. involvement in the Syrian war that he had told top advisers five days earlier he wanted to end. He opened the war-planning meeting with a rambling, televised tirade about the FBI raid of the offices of Michael Cohen, his personal attorney, under scrutiny for having paid $130,000 in hush money to a porn performer just before the 2016 election. During his almost-10-minute rant, Trump attacked top law enforcement officials—including ones he’d chosen to serve in his administration—for their involvement in a “witch hunt” meant to damage his presidency. One moment he was lamenting having chosen Jeff Sessions as attorney general and complaining about Hillary Clinton’s “acid-washed” emails, the next he was talking about the chemical weapons attack in Syria and the U.S. resolve to respond.
Sitting grimly at the side of the president as he expounded on the witch hunt was John Bolton, his third national security adviser in 15 months. As Trump’s national security team ponders how to operationalize the president’s constantly changing positions on Syria, it is simultaneously undergoing a top-to-bottom overhaul. In recent weeks, the following senior officials have left the administration, voluntarily or otherwise: secretary of state, national security adviser, deputy national security adviser, deputy national security adviser for strategy, homeland security adviser, undersecretary of state for public affairs, and national security council spokesman.
Beyond national security, the White House communications director, the top White House economic adviser, the White House staff secretary, a senior White House communications adviser, the secretary of veterans affairs, and the president’s personal aide have all either headed for the exits or been pushed out.
It’s worth noting that these were Trump people. Many of them were chosen for their loyalty to him and their belief in what they understood to be his agenda.
The turmoil extends well beyond the administration. Close observers of Trump’s recent policy reversals look like the crowd at a tennis match, as he publicly declares himself for and against a clean vote on DACA, for and against reinstituting an assault-weapons ban, for and against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, for and against war in Syria. A graph of stock market volatility looks like the Rocky Mountains, as the president one day announces unplanned tariffs and praises trade wars as “good and easy to win,” only to turn around and carve out market-pleasing exemptions and suggest his previous proposals were mere bluster for the purposes of negotiation.
Trump’s White House spent weeks rallying support among Capitol Hill Republicans for the reauthorization of a crucial intelligence collection program, only to have a last-minute Trump attack on the law nearly lead to its expiration. The president threatened to veto the execrable omnibus spending bill after it had passed and despite the fact that administration officials had worked closely with lawmakers to determine what was in it.
It’s not at all clear what comes next. Republican officials are afraid to take on Trump because their base still likes the guy. And the base still likes the guy, in part, because so few elected Republicans take him on. This is the harsh reality for movement conservatives.
Looking back on Paul Ryan’s contributions to American politics and governance, I think the positives far outweigh the negatives, chief among them his courageous efforts to educate voters and policymakers about the coming entitlement crisis and his innovative policy solutions to address it. Beyond that, he went out of his way to give the benefit of the doubt to his political opponents, even when few of them returned the favor.
A final irony: Paul Ryan made a decision that he believed was in the long-term interests of the Republican party and the conservative movement, and he leaves with the scorn of many in the party’s base. Donald Trump has not a care at all for the GOP and conservative principles except insofar as they benefit him. And he enjoys broad support from the party’s rank and file and the constant genuflection of its so-called leaders.
The early frontrunner to serve as Ryan’s replacement, House majority leader Kevin McCarthy, tweeted on April 12 that we’re in the midst of “America’s comeback” and promised “our work with @POTUS is just getting started.”
“#MAGA.”
