The irrelevancy of Paul Ryan

In the Trump era, the House speaker ceased to matter because Congress itself ceased to matter

Paul Ryan and Donald Trump.
(Image credit: Aaron P. Bernstein/Pool via AP)

When Paul Ryan assumed the speakership, he was hailed as the only Republican in Congress capable of unifying an increasingly fractious party. Respected by the Tea Party as a rare member of the leadership who was a true believer at heart, Ryan promised "concrete results," and a new approach to running the House that gave regular members more input on legislation.

To a first approximation, none of that happened. Under Speaker Ryan, Republicans were unable to agree on a plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare, unable to cut entitlements (Ryan's personal dream since he was in college), unable to make the budget process functional, unable even to address the administration's own priorities of curbing immigration. The only important legislation Congress passed during Ryan's tenure was the tax cut, which was cobbled together frantically with essentially no time for regular members to read it, much less have material input on it. From that perspective, Ryan's tenure looks like a record of failure.

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Noah Millman

Noah Millman is a screenwriter and filmmaker, a political columnist and a critic. From 2012 through 2017 he was a senior editor and featured blogger at The American Conservative. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Politico, USA Today, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Foreign Policy, Modern Age, First Things, and the Jewish Review of Books, among other publications. Noah lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.