The Institute of Politics welcomed the 54th speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, to the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum this spring. Anthony Foxx, director of the School’s Center for Public Leadership, spoke with Ryan about his accelerated rise in government and his thoughts on the state of our democracy today.
Ryan is a staunch defender of Article 1 of the Constitution, which defines the powers of the legislative branch. “I do think this executive branch is encroaching on the legislative branch, particularly in the funding,” said Ryan. That, he said, is the core of Article 1: the power of the purse. “The Legislative Branch is the more powerful branch in our Constitution.”
As speaker of the House, Ryan sued both the Obama and the Trump administrations to protect the loss of legislative power. “When you have unified government, in my opinion, that is where encroachment happens,” Ryan said. “The majority, if it is the same party as the president, isn’t going to want to buck the guy who’s the head of the party.”
The John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum event covered a wide range of topics including Ryan’s view on DEI, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment principles, Harvard’s embattled relationship with the Trump administration, and the Catholic faith that he shares with such different figures as Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and J.D. Vance. Read more excerpts from the conversation in Ryan’s remarks below.
On the path to politics
I’m from Janesville, Wisconsin, and you’re not raised to think that way [being involved in politics]. I was enamored with the idea of becoming an economist, that’s what I studied in college. I lost my dad when I was a kid, so I had many mentors when I worked as a staff person on the Hill and in think tanks.
When I was 27, my hometown congressman left to run for the Senate and encouraged me to run for his seat. I was on the Hill for a couple of years working on policy and asked those mentors if this was a crazy idea. Jack Kemp, chief among them, was really encouraging.
I ended up getting that nomination and winning that seat and spent 20 years in Congress.
On being the youngest speaker of the House
That’s not a particularly fun job. I was 13th in seniority but I was able to make a case. I became chairman of the budget committee, writing and passing budgets. Then Mitt [Romney] put me on the ticket [for the 2012 presidential election] and the rest kind of took off from there.
“What the conservatives want to conserve are certain principles and institutions that make us great, that make our society flourish, that make humankind reach its best version of itself.”
My takeaway for young people is this: Develop good habits, work really hard, know your subject matter, let the game come to you, and rise to a meritocracy. The best advice I got was actually from a congressman from here, Barney Frank. He told me to be a specialist, to be the best informed, the most thorough person on that item. For me, it was the budget.
On conservatism and its factions
What I call “full spectrum” conservatism is really more of a classical liberal thing. What the conservatives want to conserve are certain principles and institutions that make us great, that make our society flourish, that make humankind reach its best version of itself. What conservatives want is built on a rich tradition of great thought starting with the Enlightenment.
If you want to read about conservatism, get to Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk. If you want to be in the free market arena, which I am, read Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman.
These writers say that our country is built on incredibly important principles—freedom, self-determination, pluralism—and these principles need to be conserved and reapplied because they are timeless in solving the problems of the day.
We strive for a society that promotes equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. We premise this on a philosophy of natural law and natural rights, given to us by the creator, and the job of government is to protect those rights so long as we are not infringing upon another person’s right to do the same.
That’s what conservatives want to conserve, but every political party has factions.
I’m an old Jack Kemp, Ronald Reagan guy, a classical liberal conservative. Back in my career, I fought the paleoconservatives: very protectionist, anti-immigrant, kind of big government. The current variant is the Trump mega-populist, nationalist conservatives. They are the 2.0 version of paleoconservatives and not my variant, I don’t even want to call it conservatism.
What I worry about is that both parties have grabbed the philosophy of moral relativism, and they’ve embraced moral relativism such that might makes right and the end justifies the means. The other side is the enemy, and therefore it doesn’t matter what we do to win as long as they don’t.
We don’t have anything close to the political seriousness to fix things and make them better.
On tariffs and the Iran war
I don’t like the tariff policy. I don’t think it is good economics, and I don’t think it’s good diplomacy. For those of us who are free traders, we missed the ball we didn’t enforce the agreements that we had and as a result, China in particular, took us to lunch. I do think there’s got to be a rebalancing of what trade looks like. And I think there is bipartisan consensus on dealing with China in a constructive way.
Trump’s foreign policy record is mixed. There’s definitely an appreciation for our country’s military.
Everybody knows I’m not a Trump guy, but after sitting through 20 years of Iran briefings, we weren’t getting any better. I’m not going to armchair quarterback the timing of this operation [in Iran], but to me it seems like a very prudent move. But I worry about stopping it before the job is finished. Don’t give them the “oil weapon” of being the toll booth collector of the Persian Gulf.
People who have “Trump derangement syndrome” think that just because he did it, this is a terrible thing. I would venture to tell you that if whoever was president saw this window, they would probably do the same thing.
On what happens after Trump
I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know there will be a robust debate among all of the conservative factions for which one will dominate. Mitt and I tried to extend the Reagan era. Trump is leaving and some other era will occur. I obviously hope it is my variant at the American Enterprise Institute, the think tank I am in. We are working on bringing solutions that work for the entire country.
Nothing is permanent. Come 2028, we’ll see what happens.
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Photographs by Martha Stewart