“Hello!

I’ll just leave it here.

It has a lot of information

you can really use.”

And with that, the woman eases backward, smiles pityingly, and gently closes the door on the still warbling Speaker.

* * *

It’s been a rough year for Paul Ryan. In addition to grappling with his raucous conference, the speaker has, with his Hamlet-esque dithering over Donald Trump, assumed an awkward position vis-à-vis the nominee: distant enough to be denounced as a traitor by Trump supporters, yet conciliatory enough to be deemed an enabler by much of non-Trump America.

But as the race degrades at an alarming rate, Ryan is increasingly striving to shun the chaos and take refuge in a purer source of inspiration: his beloved Republican agenda, A Better Way.

It has been four months now since Ryan rolled out his election-year blueprint for a GOP-controlled government. Since then, he has been all about introducing and educating the public about it. “Look no further than the speaker’s Twitter feed or our press releases on weekly addresses, on-cameras, etc.,” urged a Republican operative (who requested anonymity lest our chat be construed as critical of the party’s tissue-skinned nominee). “I’d say multiple emails a day are sent on this topic and have been since the unveiling.”

Thus far, the public has not been especially wowed by—or, really, even aware of—the speaker’s grand vision. No matter: Ryan’s faith in the power of his message abides, as does his commitment to spreading the Good News. If anything, the more debased the electoral scene, the more he has focused on his higher calling. Wherever he wanders, that little white pamphlet is in his pocket, ready to be shared. When reporters ask him a question—any question at all—he is likely to respond by invoking A Better Way (especially if the question involves Trump). And every few hours, into the dank political sewer of Twitter, Ryan will toss a #BetterWay reference on issues ranging from the VA:

President Obama doesn’t want you to know this, but the #VA is still broken. We have a plan to fix it. #Better Way.

To the national debt:

RT if you agree: It’s time to restore the power of the purse and impose new limits on government spending.

To executive overreach:

Under BOTH parties, the presidency keeps breaking the rules, and Congress keeps allowing it to happen. We have a #BetterWay to restore our constitutional separation of powers.

Some rank-and-file Republicans have made the decision to follow suit (if somewhat less zealously). “You might have noticed Better Way more now as some of our House members are seeking their own identity outside of the top of the ticket, localizing the race, etc,” said the operative, who notes that, while this plan was in the works well before the nominee was decided, it now looks “fairly prescient in hindsight. And reaffirms Ryan's notion that policy wins out over personality.”