Except that, thus far, Ryan’s beloved agenda—the one his wonkish heart has been dreaming of and laboring over and counting on to define his speakership—has been something of a PR bust, yet another sad casualty of this election cycle’s Trumpsanity.

Just look at what happened at the rollout of the agenda’s first plank: Ryan’s pet anti-poverty plan. The speaker and seven colleagues crossed the Anacostia River to commune with the impoverished, overwhelmingly minority residents from the “bad” side of Washington. But after all the speechifying, the only thing reporters wanted to talk about was Donald Trump’s latest outrage, regarding the Mexican heritage of Judge Gonzalo Curiel. And so the big news to come rolling out of the event was Ryan’s “textbook” racism comment.

“The first six questions were about Trump,” AshLee Strong, Ryan’s spokesman recalled to me. The leader’s office has come to expect that sort of thing, she admitted. “Still, it seemed like an odd time to be hammering at Trump.”

For the second rollout (theme: national security), Ryan wasn’t taking any chances. He held the June 9 event at the Council on Foreign Relations, and lawmakers did not take questions from the press, only members of the council. But even then (and despite Ryan’s best efforts), the topic du jour was Trump, and the news stories to emerge focused not on the difference between Republicans’ governing vision and a Democratic one—which is kinda the whole point of the “A Better Way” theme—but on the gulf between Ryan and his own party’s presidential nominee. (With both White House contenders at odds with the Republican congressional vision, how exactly are voters supposed to reach “A Better Way”?)

Five days later, rollout No. 3 (“tackling excessive regulations”) was held on the West Lawn of the Capitol. The assembled lawmakers did their thing, and then Ryan took four questions, only the last of which had anything to do with regulation. Two questions were about Trump, one of which the speaker refused to address altogether. The event generated no buzz—unlike Ryan’s press conference that day, in which he rejected Trump’s call for a ban on Muslim immigrants. That definitely got people’s attention.

Then there was the Statuary Hall event, rollout No. 4, featuring by far the most esoteric topic in “A Better Way.” Ryan’s only participation in the hour-long presentation was to deliver brief closing remarks. There were no questions asked or answered by anyone. The Ryan-themed news of that day: His later assertion that he currently does not intend to un-endorse Trump.

At this rate, Ryan should consider not even bothering to prepare remarks for the rollouts of the final two agenda pieces (health care and taxes). He might as well just wait and see what kind of verbal atrocities Trump commits during those news cycles.