Anybody out there want to run for Speaker of the House? Hello? Anybody, that is, who happens to be (a) relatively sane and (b) a Republican member of Congress?

You might suppose that the answer to that question, which was no until a few days ago, is now yes—the yes-man being Paul Ryan, the promising young fellow who achieved global fame as Mitt Romney’s running mate. But it would be a mistake to conclude that Ryan is “running,” or ever truly “ran,” for Speaker. He said often enough and feelingly enough that he didn’t want the job. What he did do, eventually, was to express a tentative, reluctant willingness to be Speaker: he allowed that, if certain conditions were met, he would condescend to accept. He didn’t run for Speaker; he invited the Speakership to run for him. It did, and now he must be wondering if it will run him over. He may yet end up roadkill, a sail cat on the highway to oblivion.

The week before last, when Ryan was in full agonizing mode, here was the headline on page one of the Times:

Latest Unease

On Right: Ryan

Is Too Far Left

The story, by Jennifer Steinhauer, reported that “far-right media figures,” with encouragement from Tea Party extremists in the House, were on a “furious Internet expedition” to cover Ryan in “political silt” on account of his history of being “traitorous to conservatism.” To be sure, Ryan is on board with outlawing gay weddings and nearly all abortions, privatizing Social Security, voucherizing Medicare, abolishing Medicaid and replacing it with ever-diminishing block grants to the states, and ignoring global warming. His famously wonky budget proposals would shrink food stamps and college aid while cutting rich people’s taxes, in many cases by half. He requires his interns to read “Atlas Shrugged.” His treason consists solely of what Steinhauer calls “flashes of pragmatism,” such as questioning the wisdom of shutting down the government and/or forcing the Treasury to default on its obligations.

After his announcement of availability, Ryan found himself facing an unappetizing choice. He could compromise (i.e., surrender) on some of his demands, such as his unrealistic insistence on getting the formal endorsement of every single House Republican faction—thus suggesting that he buckles under pressure. Or he could stick to his guns (as is his right under the Second Amendment), withdraw, and be blamed for consigning his party to endless chaos, failing to step up in the hour of Republican need, etc. He chose the former.

But there’s still time—the vote isn’t until next Thursday. And there’s an escape hatch—for Ryan in particular and the Republican Party in general.

Let’s go to the Constitution. “The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker,” Article I, Section 2 says—without adding “from among its Members” or something to that effect. This was almost certainly a drafting error, an inadvertent omission. But its undisputed effect is to leave the House free to “chuse” anyone it chooses.

This provision, or lack of provision, has been widely noted, and there was some early, desultory talk of taking advantage of it. One name that was tossed out was that of J. C. Watts, a former four-term congressman from Oklahoma, now a lobbyist. Diversity-wise, Watts would be what might be called the Ben Carson option, with football substituted for brain surgery. But Watts has a fatal taint: he has held public office. In the government. The federal government.

There’s a better way.

Donald Trump fulfills the constitutional requirements for the Speakership, because there are none. Also, Speakers speak, and Trump is very good at speaking, as he has regularly proved on television, not only as a budding politician but also as a “reality” star—and reality, with or without scare quotes, is something of which the Republican Party is sorely in need.

Another thing Speakers are supposed to do—according to good-government types, bipartisanship junkies, and even the unknown but not insubstantial number of Republicans who suspect that it may be politically advantageous to at least show an interest in “governing” and “getting things done”—is make deals, as long as said deals are struck by a “tough negotiator.” Sound like someone you know? Someone like, maybe, the best-selling author of “The Art of the Deal”? Like the guy who, just last week, bluffed CNBC into immediately yielding to his demand that the next G.O.P. debate be an hour shorter and an opening statement longer?

A Trump Speakership would be a win-win for all concerned. For the rest of the Republican Presidential field, “establishment” (Bush, Rubio, Kasich, etc.) and “insurgent” (Cruz, Huckabee, etc.) alike, it would eliminate a dangerously unpredictable, ideologically inscrutable, incomprehensibly popular rival who makes the others look like flop-sweat-covered, low-energy professional politicians hopelessly in hock to rich contributors and corporations. (The Ben Carson problem would persist for a while, of course, but, sooner or later, the doctor’s profound weirdness, among other problems, may be relied upon to dispose of that one.)

As for Ryan, the deal would spare him the doom that very likely will be his fate if he becomes Speaker. Nothing about the terms under which he has agreed to accept the post changes the fact that, absurd as the notion may be, he is still “too far left.” For a small but procedurally decisive segment of his Republican colleagues in the House, governmental dysfunction, gridlock, paralysis, and chaos are features, not bugs. These features of the status quo are not about to go away. Ryan’s political business plan called for him to spend the next four years as the respected (among conservatives) chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, followed by eight triumphant years in the White House, followed by a comfortable retirement at the Ryan Presidential Library and Foundation. The prospect for him now is a short, harrowing, career-ending interval of misery on Capitol Hill followed by a lucrative but soul-killing job as a K Street lobbyist.

For Trump himself, the deal is just as good. Let’s start with an assumption: notwithstanding the current hysteria, Trump is not going to be the Republican nominee. He can go down in the annals of politics and entertainment as a curiosity, a footnote: the flamboyant mogul who ran for President on a lark, threw a scare into the regulars for a while, got bored and/or boring, and went back to his perch at Trump Tower and the tabloids. Or he can be the first and only non-member of the House of Representatives to be its Speaker in the two hundred and twenty-six years since its founding. He probably wouldn’t last long in the job, and he probably wouldn’t want to, and, anyway, he wouldn’t have to. No matter what, he will have become a truly historic figure, and he can spend the rest of his life preening as such.

Not only that: Speaker Trump could continue to nurse his White House fantasies. It’s true that, for a conventional politician, the Speakership has always been a too-slippery steppingstone to the Presidency. Being a governor, a senator, or a victorious general has always been a better route. Ex-Speakers Henry Clay and James G. Blaine managed to make it as far as winning their respective parties’ nominations, but they got creamed in November. Of the sixty-one Speakers so far, only one has ever actually become President: James K. Polk—and he had quit the House six years earlier to take the governorship of Tennessee. But, for a conventional Republican politician like Ryan, given the nihilistic ungovernability of today’s G.O.P. caucus, the Speakership is a gravestone. Hence the man’s reluctance.

Trump, however, is not a conventional politician. A few months as Speaker would be just the dollop of “government experience” he needs to fill out his résumé for next time. Nor could this time be entirely ruled out. The Speaker of the House is third in line for the Presidency. An accident or some such could befall whoever is President and Vice-President. As Jeb Bush recently noted, stuff happens.