History will be kind in recording the tenure of Paul Ryan, R-Wis., as speaker of the House of Representatives, but not abundantly so.

After all, Ryan has failed in his primary ambition: reforms to address the nation’s catastrophic debt trajectory. Here, Ryan was unable to persuade the president of the necessity of entitlement reform, nor to mobilize a Republican caucus toward hard choices, nor to find bipartisan compromise with a Democratic Party devoted to debt.