Paul Ryan’s work as speaker of the House is not quite done, but his official “farewell address” at the Library of Congress had an elegiac quality.

Ryan spent his first 17 years in Congress as a wunderkind with high ideals combined with a brain for policy, and enough political skill to convince his party to embrace his policy prescriptions. He spent his last three years as a speaker who achieved more than his detractors admit, but far less than he might have if a more conventional Republican had been president. He leaves with Washington in a condition of angry chaos his mentor Jack Kemp would have detested, with Ryan repeatedly lamenting that he doesn’t know how to fix it.