Paul Ryan Goes on Offense

Paul Ryan enters his first full year as speaker of the House with a unified caucus, an ambitious agenda, and an audacious goal: Go on offense against President Obama and the Democratic Party, while laying the predicate for unified Republican control of government in 2017. “We have no clue who our nominee is going to be,” Ryan tells me over the phone, “and the last thing we should do is sit around and wait.”

Ryan says he learned in 2012 that Republicans should make the case for their policies as quickly and as forcefully as possible. “We can’t sit around and be reactionaries and walk into every trap Obama sets for us. We have to nationalize the election on ideas and give the country a choice.” He wants an “honest election” that results in a “mandate election victory” for the next president: “An honest election isn’t running on vague platitudes, it isn’t a personality contest. It’s explaining who you are, what you believe, what you intend to do, and why it relates to people.”

I spoke to Ryan as he prepared to return to Wisconsin in time for a parent-teacher conference. What’s surprised him most about being speaker, he said, is how much he likes the job. “I re-engineered the job, loosening it up, decentralizing power through regular order. I’m not sitting in an office trying to predetermine everything. I’ve made it more of a policy and communications role.” He’s stuck to his pledge of dedicating weekends to his family. The atmosphere at the recent House Republican retreat, he said, was “very good, very pumped.” Congressmen are energized; they want to work. “We’re not sitting in these jobs hoping to keep them and have careers as politicians. We all know the general direction we want to go.”

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