Paul Ryan, who said Wednesday he would retire from Congress at the end of the year, enabled the worst of President Donald Trump’s faults.

The speaker of the House of Representatives helped put our country on the path to constitutional crisis, impeachment, tyranny or worse. When his country and his party needed him most, Ryan did not answer the call.

The Constitution envisioned an independent legislative branch that would counter any tendency of the executive toward despotism, corruption or mere incompetence. Ryan failed us and the Founding Fathers by ignoring his sworn duty to be the constitutional counterweight to Trump.

Ryan could have ensured that Trump was held to high standards of ethical conduct.

Ryan could have forced Trump to release his tax returns so that everybody would know exactly where the president’s personal interests lie. He could have pressured Trump to divest his many businesses before taking office to avoid even the whiff of self-dealing. He could have insisted that nepotism was unacceptable in the White House and anywhere in government. He could have fought for an independent and objective investigation by Congress into Russia’s attack on our elections, and into the Trump campaign’s possible involvement.

Ryan could have moved legislation to block Trump’s Muslim ban. He could have moved legislation to protect the Dreamers. He could have moved legislation to restore the power of Congress to regulate foreign trade. These are all issues that Ryan had said were important to him, but he refused to act or even speak out once Trump entered the White House.

House Speaker Paul Ryan: This year will be my last

Ryan did none of that. Ryan made a deal: I’ll turn a blind eye on the lies, the pussy grabbing, the corruption, the ignorance of policy, the saber-rattling, the despotism, the chaos, the deportations, the trade wars, the racism and the naked nationalism if Trump helps me abolish Obamacare and lower taxes on the richest Americans.

Ryan’s own political agenda was more important to him than his historically significant position as one of the few people who could defend the Constitution against its enemies, foreign and domestic.

Ryan also failed his own party. The party of Lincoln and Roosevelt and Eisenhower is dead. The party that had once stood (at least in its finer moments) for racial tolerance, global leadership and free trade is gone.

There was a time that Paul Ryan spoke out against the ugliness that Trump and Trumpism has unleashed.

Ryan briefly stood up to Trump’s toxic brand of nationalism in May 2016, after Trump had nailed down the Republican Party nomination. Republicans want “a standard-bearer that bears our standards,” Ryan said then, pointedly refusing to endorse the maverick reality-TV star who had won the nomination by actively campaigning against the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower and Ryan.

It really seemed, for a moment, that the Never-Trumpers and Trump-Skeptics in the Republican Party might serve as a counterweight to Trump’s more divisive traits. The New York Times ran this headline: “Ryan-Trump Breach May Be Beyond Repair.”



How wrong they were.

In the wake of Ryan’s abdication from Congress, there’s been a lot of coverage about his legacy. Most of it has focused on the massive hole Ryan blew in the federal budget, and how poor Paul Ryan didn’t get to fulfill his youthful dream of decapitating Social Security and Medicare.

But I think Ryan’s true legacy is more monumental than that. When our democracy was in crisis, when the fabric of our nation was being ripped apart by the president, Paul Ryan thought only of his own political goals. He abdicated his duty.

And now that Paul Ryan is on his way out, who is left in the Republican Party that has any misgivings — no matter how suppressed — about the direction this country is going?