Ryan should seek progress over partisanship

Paul Ryan was a young man in a hurry, coming out of Wisconsin to win election in the U.S. House of Representatives and, barely in his 40s, being chosen by Mitt Romney as his vice presidential running mate in 2012.

The newly elected speaker of the House is a conservative ideologue to be sure but one mainstream Republicans hope can pull the reins on the outrageous shenanigans of the Freedom Caucus, or tea party members of the House. This is the group that essentially drove now former Speaker John Boehner from power, even though their numbers are somewhere in the high 30s to low 40s. But Republicans have long tied themselves to a philosophical rule that they want to act as a unified caucus and ignore the Democrats completely.

Boehner broke that rule to achieve an admirable deal to avoid a government shutdown and raise the nation’s debt borrowing limit. Before President Obama, the debit limit issue had been a routine issue, with conservative and liberal members of Congress realizing it would be catastrophic for the economy if America defaulted on its debts. But tea partyers, fueled by their hatred of all things Obama, appear ready and willing to take the nation’s economy down. It’s nonsensical and frightening.

Ryan is more pragmatic than that, but if he’s to fulfill the speaker’s obligation to be a national leader, he must reach out to Democrats and he must stem the vociferous, vicious rhetoric of his tea party. If he doesn’t, that group will bring him down as surely as it got to Boehner.

Ryan has talked of “reforms” in Medicare and Social Security. Mainstream Republicans, who perhaps have more knowledge of the Great Depression than does Ryan, know that to threaten in any way the security those programs offer to tens of millions of Americans would be political suicide, not to mention just wrong. Let us hope that the 45-year-old speaker listens to the counsel of those who are going to tell him that.

And it will be productive for the country if Ryan can as well build some kind of relationship with President Obama. They will never be allies, but Ryan’s responsibilities now go beyond his district, his caucus or his chamber. He is second in line, after the vice president, if something happens to the president. He must now become a national leader who puts the country’s interest ahead of party and political opportunism. Whether he can achieve that goal will ultimately define his role in history.

For his part, Obama will have to reach out to Ryan. The president, relatively inexperienced in the ways of Washington when he took office, hasn’t done well in building relationships in Congress. He has had some legitimate frustrations, to be sure, but he knows it’s in the country’s best interest if the president and the speaker can come together in crisis.

This story was originally published October 29, 2015 at 6:06 PM with the headline "Ryan should seek progress over partisanship."