Oct. 23--John Boehner is cigarettes and golf; Paul Ryan is the P90X workout and bowhunting. Boehner is 65; Ryan is 45. Boehner is stepping down as speaker of the House, and it looks as though Ryan soon will be stepping up. If Ryan has his way, he won't be just a different speaker; he'll be a different kind of speaker.
House members typically climb the ladder to leadership posts by learning how to cut deals, raise money, forge relationships and avoid risks. Boehner's skills in those areas gained him the top job, but he found it to be less a matter of leading troops than herding cats. "Garbage men get used to the smell of bad garbage," he said a few weeks ago, explaining how he endured the incessant aggravations. But then he made his break.
Ryan hopes to avoid the snares that caught Boehner, who faced the constant threat of being toppled by Republican members averse to compromise. The rangy Wisconsinite didn't want the job, and he had to be persuaded to run. By forcing the conservative Freedom Caucus to support him without apparent concessions on his part, he starts from a position of enviable strength. Maybe the cats will become a bit more cooperative.
The biggest difference is that Ryan made his name not as a political operator but as a political thinker. He says he wants the GOP to go "from being an opposition party to being a proposition party," and if anyone is equipped to lead that change, it's Ryan. Mitt Romney, who picked him as his running mate in 2012, said recently that "he is a man of ideas who is driven to see them applied for the public good."
Ryan has been an able exponent of conservative themes on a range of issues. But his biggest contribution has been on the greatest challenge facing Congress and the country: the steadily building fiscal crisis. Washington has saddled taxpayers with trillions in future obligations, which grow every day, and Ryan understands that this approach is unsustainable as well as unconscionable.
In 2011, as chairman of the budget committee, he produced a blueprint to cut spending by $6.2 trillion over the coming decade, compared to the administration's plan. Ryan's proposal addressed burgeoning entitlements by revamping future Medicare benefits for those now younger than 55 and converting federal Medicaid outlays to block grants, allowing states more options in delivering health care to the poor.
The plan, called "The Path to Prosperity," identified reality in stark terms: "Absent action, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will soon grow to consume every dollar of revenue that the government raises in taxes." At that unhappy stage, the only options would be brutal cuts in benefits or huge increases in taxes -- or a massive federal default.
Any of those would be disastrous. So it's essential that Congress and the president take measured steps as soon as possible to put the government on a sustainable fiscal path. More than most elected officials in Washington, Ryan understands the composition of the challenge -- and the urgency of addressing it. He may not have the ideal answers. But he's asking the right questions and offering responsible remedies.
Whether he can turn the speaker's chair into a vehicle for policy leadership is hardly certain. It's a job that is necessarily occupied with the day-to-day business of the House and the many needs of members. Recent occupants, it's fair to say, will not be remembered for their innovative thinking about grand policy.
We hope Ryan will be different. Even those who question his remedies have to acknowledge that the problems are real and in need of prompt attention. If he can push Congress and the White House to get serious about fixing them, he'll be recognized as a success -- not just by those of us here today, but by future generations.
