Jack Kemp, former secretary of Housing and Urban Development and a conservative hero throughout the Reagan, Bush and Clinton eras, once said, “The purpose of politics is not to defeat your opponent as much as it is to provide superior leadership and better ideas than the opposition.” This quote seems to encapsulate Kemp’s legacy — one of optimistic, aspirational leadership.
House Speaker Paul Ryan was heavily influenced by Kemp. He became an aide to Kemp at the age of 23, and the two remained close up to Kemp’s death in 2009. Ryan seems to be carrying on his legacy well.
Amid the unprecedentedly vitriolic campaign for the Republican nomination, Ryan used his clout as speaker on Wednesday to criticize the ugly nature of political discourse today. In a 14-minute speech, Ryan struck an uplifting tone characteristic of his mentor.
“Instead of playing to your anxieties,” he said, “we can appeal to your aspirations.”
Ryan’s message offered important themes regarding the rejection of identity politics and the importance of compromise. Regardless of political allegiance, Americans should be thankful that Ryan, who has a unique credibility on the subject, had the courage to give this speech.
Some critics have called Ryan hypocritical, saying he is too conservative to be a unifier. They cite his infamously parsimonious budgets and his presence on the Romney ticket in 2012.
Yet the extremity of his conservatism is exactly what makes him a good example. Kemp himself was a fiercely committed conservative. The Reagan tax cut of 1981 was Kemp’s brainchild. Nonetheless, Kemp earned a legacy as a unifier.
Despite Ryan’s ideological commitment, he also has a history of being a unifying figure and of proposing positive alternatives to the opposition’s ideas.
Most notably, in 2013, Ryan famously collaborated with Washington Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat and the then chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, to work out a bipartisan budget in a politically divided Congress. This effort was a response to two years of partisanship-induced budget and debt ceiling crises, including the government shutdown that October. When the nation’s credibility was on the line, Ryan stepped up to be a conciliator and provide relief from the crushing impact of sequestration.
As speaker, his work has continued in this vein. Ryan recently passed a tax and spending bill that the LA Times hailed as a “real give-and-take with Democrats.”
Furthermore, Ryan has offered a positive vision for his party — a party that has spent the past seven years obstructing legislation without proposing alternatives. For instance, unlike his party colleagues, Ryan actually proposed an alternative to the Affordable Care Act, called The Patients’ Choice Act. As speaker, he has worked to “put together a complete alternative to the Left’s agenda.”
Ryan has set an example not just for politicians, but also for all Americans. Not only has he brought a conciliatory nature and positive vision to Washington D.C., but he also used the speech to address his own faults — a rare occurrence for a politician.
He expressed regret for speaking in terms of “makers and takers” when running for vice president in 2012, saying that he shouldn’t have “castigate[d] a large group of Americans to make a point.” While most politicians won’t admit to hyperbolizing — particularly in this year’s campaign — Ryan pointed out that this was a dangerous and harmful way to appeal to the public.
Additionally, this message was an important one for the public in the age of social media, which offers ideological groups a place to cluster and magnify their collective outrage in hyperbolic terms.
Many saw this speech as a rebuke of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. In The Week magazine, Pascal Emmanuel Gobry criticized Ryan’s speech for not attacking Trump directly. But thinking of the speech in this way is a tragic mistake.
Attacking Trump would have undermined Ryan’s message, drawing him into a drawn-out public brawl with the Republican frontrunner. Not only has this proven to be a poor strategy, typically inflating Trump’s support, but it also would have forced Ryan to stoop to Trump’s level, damaging his credibility.
It seems that this speech was about much more than just Trump. Ryan is smart enough to understand that Trump isn’t the cause of the current atmosphere but a symptom of many larger issues.
Therefore, Ryan’s appeal was not to Trump supporters but to all Americans. From the legislators to the candidates to typical Americans partaking in political debate, Ryan sought to temper the growing repugnance with which people of opposing viewpoints have come to view each other.
Let Americans heed his advice and follow his — and Kemp’s — example. Ryan’s speech and his record prove that one can be passionately committed to a set of ideals and still look for common ground in the interest of the collective good. It is through these values that the United States will begin to politically heal itself.
