The Daily - Paul Ryan’s Exit Interview

Episode Date: August 8, 2018

Why would the House speaker — and the third most powerful Republican in Washington — walk away at the age of 48? Guest: Mark Leibovich, who recently interviewed Paul Ryan for The New York Times Magazine. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, why would the third most powerful Republican in Washington voluntarily leave his seat at the age of 48? An exit interview with Paul Ryan. It's Wednesday, August 8th. Morning. I wanted to share with you a little of what I just told my colleagues.

Mark, take us back to April when Paul Ryan announced that he wouldn't be seeking re-election in the fall. What did he say about that? You all know that I did not seek this job. I took it reluctantly. But I have given this job everything that I have. And I have no regrets whatsoever for having accepted this responsibility. But the truth is, it's easy for it to take over everything in your life.

So essentially his main reason for retiring at age 48 at the top of his profession. Because there are other things in life that can be flitting as well. Namely your time as a husband and a dad. Is that he wanted to spend more time with his family, which is perfectly legitimate, but it seemed a little curious given the trajectory of Paul Ryan's career, which just became extremely entangled with Donald Trump starting about a year and a half, two years ago in ways that I don't

think he can escape. That's why today I'm announcing that this year will be my last one as a member of the House. Much work remains, but I like to think I have done my part, my little part in history to set us on a better course. Thank you. So I asked his communications team if he would be willing to let me have a few conversations with the speaker. And to my surprise, they said, yeah, sure. Mark Leibovich recently interviewed Paul Ryan for The Times Magazine. Testing 1-2-3, testing 1-2-3. So tell us about that first interview.

Good to see you. Good to see you. Duncan, am I saying... The first interview was, I guess, an icebreaker. By the way, I'm going to, I'm doing the Wisconsin Book Festival in... Madison. Madison in October. And I didn't have big expectations for it because I knew there was going to be a few conversations

and I didn't want to scare him off and have the rest of the conversations blow up and get cancelled, which is always a consideration when you're doing multiple interviews. My audience is really full secret. All right. He then went to an event in which he talked mostly about his career at the Washington Economic Society. There were a couple of questions at that event in which he sort of ducked. He was asked, do you believe President Trump should pardon anyone who's caught up in Robert Mueller's

investigation? He blew it off. He said, I don't know, I don't want to go there, something to that effect. But I fixated on that. And on the way back... I spent my time thinking about that stuff. But shouldn't you? I said, you know, you said you'm spending my time thinking about that stuff. But shouldn't you? I said, you know, you said you don't want to go there, but like, shouldn't you? If you're not going to touch that, who is going to touch that? If not you, who? And I think he was a little jarred.

My point is, I've always, I said it long and clear. And eventually he said that... I'm not going to spend all my time getting in these circular debates about theoretical what-ifs happen while I'm trying to get an agenda passed. I'm not going to get into a hypothetical thing about him pardoning people. I said, well, he already has pardoned people. He already has. No, I'm talking about firing and things like that. He's already done that, too.

So it got a little more combative than I would have expected. I don't think he knows my opinion on these things. I did wonder afterwards if it was going to complicate future discussions. combative than I would have expected. I don't think... He knows my opinion on these things. I did wonder afterwards if it was going to complicate future discussions, but luckily it didn't. I'll talk to you soon. Yep, you too. So what about the second interview?

The second interview was also in a car. It's a great day to talk about tribalism. We were headed to the American Enterprise Institute where he was doing an event on political tribalism. So you're doing well? Yeah, I'm fine. Doing well. This happened to be two days after President Trump

and Vladimir Putin had their infamous press conference in Helsinki. And so I was looking forward to asking the speaker all about this. As it happened, the president tweeted something about 15, 20 minutes before I went into the car, in which he basically just doubled down on everything. He said, I look forward to having President Putin come to Washington. And I said to the speaker, I said, I know how much you love responding to tweets. Yeah, I haven't seen today's. What did he do?

And I printed it out. I printed out the tweet before I left the office. And he grabbed it out of my hands. And he read it. I like to see the upper caps. There you go. The emphasis. All right.

The circled one. That's it. He actually read it to himself. But he was sort of muttering. And he was sort of spitting out certain words. I felt he was clearly exasperated. And if he tried to hide it, he wasn't trying very hard. I don't know what that is other than an obfuscation of some sort.

And then I sort of said, don't you think it would make a stronger statement if the speaker of the house on the house floor gave a speech about some of the things we're talking about. And he then said, yeah, but like, look, I'm thinking about these issues. These are very important issues. For instance, tribalism and identity politics are issues I'm very, very excited to be thinking about when I leave the Speaker's job. This is what I look forward to having time to think about when I'm done doing this. Yeah. And I'm going to do this great event at AEI. And I said to him at one point,

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, I mean, yeah, we're going to do this great event that I'm going to watch you do. And you'll have plenty of time to think about all these issues. But you're in the arena now and you have an opportunity to maybe make a bigger impact and you're choosing not to. I mean, there's an argument to be made that, you know, wouldn't a perhaps stronger voice from someone like you at a moment like this actually make the counter-argument? His response is... I did it as clear as I could at my press conference,

the first chance I was in front of TV cameras. I put the statement out within minutes of him... I put the statement out about, I don't know, eight minutes after I read the transcript. And I made it as clear as possible at my press conference what Russia is and what Russia is not. I don't know what else I can do. I think some people would love me just to start a civil war in our party

and then achieve nothing. No, I understand the counterfactual here. I'm not interested in doing that. By the way, that's not good for not just us as Republicans trying to pass legislation, but I don't think injecting more instability into the system is a healthy thing. The pissing match doesn't work. You don't think that there is a place for a more forceful counter-argument to the president

who is just completely dominating the discussion in your party? Well, I'd say... Without doing the pissing match thing? Yeah, the pissing match doesn't work. It boomerangs and he goes in the other direction. And so that's not effective. And so do I have to eat criticism to do what I think is effective? Yes, I do. But at the end of the day, what matters is being effective.

By that, he means I want to be effective. I want to pass laws. As the Speaker of the House, I am in a position to affect people's lives and make laws. That's where my job is. That's how I see my day-to-day challenges. And that's what I'm going to keep doing. So he's kind of saying to you, in response to these questions, I look forward to

being an opinionated person with strong convictions after I leave office. In the meantime, I'm doing my job. And you're saying to him, well, wait a minute, how is having opinions and convictions not part of your job as basically the second or third most important person in the United States government? You're the Speaker of the House now. You actually have some cachet. Yeah, and the cachet I have is I am in a unique role to actually make good laws, make a difference, improve people's lives, and advance these principles. And that is something that a think tanker doesn't have. That is something that a bureaucrat and the cabinet secretary doesn't have. It's something I have. Right. And that is unique. And that is where I

should focus my efforts, because that to me is where I can have real meaning. So he said, I don't want to be a pundit. You hear politicians say that a lot. And at that moment, something kind of clicked in my mind where I kind of remember thinking, all right, but is there a chicken egg thing going on here? Is the Republican base where it is today because the likes of Paul Ryan, the likes of Mitch McConnell, the likes of any alternative to Donald Trump voice in a leadership position are choosing not to speak up? And I do think that the two are related. I think that because there have been so many white flags raised, so to speak, from Republican leadership, Republican rank and file in the House, that Donald Trump has essentially had the floor to himself. And the base just sort of listens only to him.

Right, in a sense, because I'm thinking about news cycles and how we constantly ask lawmakers, reporters like you and I, for responses to things that just happened in the news. And in a sense, we do turn politicians into pundits. And then, inevitably, we kind of poke fun at them when they're on TV talking about things in the news too much. So is he kind of correct in assessing that if he becomes someone who replies to too many questions from a reporter like Mark Glebovich too much about tweets that the president sends, that he is kind of debased? Yes, he could be right. I mean, he would say, and I'm not sure he would be wrong to say, that because he didn't provoke the president into daily hostilities, he was able to get tax reform done. So, yeah, I don't think his point is illegitimate. I would argue at this point what he has to lose. What does he have to lose? You know, it beats me. I mean, again, I don't think a lot of laws are going to get passed or any big legislation is going to get passed between now and the end of his time as speaker.

I do sort of wonder why he continues to play this out after he has achieved things that I think he's very proud of, tax reform being the chief example. I feel like we're almost at AEI. I should like put you at ease with other like non-Trump questions. So we got to AEI at the end. And I remember things got a little, not heated at the end, but it was a little intense. And I remember saying to him, just as we were pulling in, I said, Mr. Speaker. Let's go. I'll ask you a few puffballs to loosen things up. I feel like I have riled you up too much before your big event. I feel like I should ask you a puffball question.

So what was working at McDonald's? What did that teach you about life? Tell me what it was like to work at McDonald's, because he worked at McDonald's when he was a teenager. Right. And he shared with me that... Yeah, so when I was interviewing for McDonald's, the manager got the big mustache. So what would you like to do? I said, I'd like to...

This is in Janesville? Yeah, I'd like to... The one right on the interstate there. I'd like to work the register and interact with the customers. He's like, yeah, I don't think you have the interpersonal skills for that. His manager said that he didn't believe he had the social skills to work the register. He would have to work the grill. So that was sort of uniquely positioned. And now I'm in Congress. You're leading the register in Congress. This is in the back row. Anyway, he does the event at AEI.

And then, you know, maybe after a total of a half hour, we were back in his suburban and heading back to the Capitol. And what was interesting to me about the ride back was he immediately went back to the notion of things that he has done privately. This is better. It actually achieves better outcomes. This, private, constant interactions, a lot of it. But then he went further in a way that surprised me. He said, essentially,

That, to me, is what's most important. So I can look myself in the mirror at the end of the day saying, avoided that tragedy, avoided that tragedy, avoided that tragedy. At the end of the day, I know that I've avoided this tragedy or that tragedy or that tragedy. That's quite a word. That word, you know, obviously jumped out at me. I'm thinking, well, what is he talking about?

Could you give me an example? I immediately followed up by saying, tragedy. Can you tell me what tragedies you've helped to avert? That's more than I usually have. And at which point he said, no, no, no, I can't do that. I've already said too much. But essentially what Paul Ryan is saying to you in that moment in the car, right, is that you just have to believe me that my best use is to be a private, unseen counselor and averter of things.

Correct. You can't prove a negative. I don't know what those private conversations are like, but he insists that there's a dialogue that is very productive. And I guess that's a bit of a dead end for our purposes because we don't know what that dialogue looks like. And that's something that we hear quite often, but also it seems like a source of enormous disappointment to moderates

and to liberals and to some Republicans that people like Paul Ryan or even Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner, who seem like they might be perfectly positioned to be moderating figures on this president, say that's what they're doing. But then in the meantime, you know, all sorts of things are happening.

Parents are being separated from their children. There is a ban on majority Muslim countries, on and on. And it's not quite clear what private moderation is actually achieving. True. You know, look, this is probably something we're going to know one day,

but it would be good to know now. And for all I know, maybe it's better that we don't know because maybe there is some very, very delicate art being performed that, you know, we could never know because we don't have all the facts. But certainly it does raise a lot of questions. Okay, so there's one more interview you have, despite all your prodding and needling and unsettling of him.

Yeah. Hi, how are you? Are you here already? I'm here already. All right, come on in. All right, man. We had a final interview in his office in late July, and he invited me in,

and I sat down in his beautiful, ornate speaker's office. By the way, I'm taping our small talk. And just as we were really getting going with the small talk, he has interrupted with a phone call. Hmm. Let me just take a call real quick. President? Yeah.

It is. I'll jump in the bird's eye. Or no, I'll kick you up. No, don't kick me out. No, no, no. I want to listen. No, you're not going to be like that. No one ever tapes his phone calls.

Tell him to say hi. We'll get you that coffee. All right. It was the president. And apparently right before he sat down with me, he had done an interview with Fox and Friends. The president was watching. Of course. The president felt the need to call Speaker Ryan to tell him that he looked good on Fox & Friends.

We talk a lot. And how often does that happen? Probably once a day, once every other day, once every other day, I'd say. And what was that? Well, he saw me on Fox & Friends, thought I looked good. That's usually how it works. He didn't seem thrown at all. That happens to me a lot.

So I understand. I understand. No, seriously, I don't want to. I mean, you know, I got to go give a speech. And understand. I understand. No, seriously, I don't want to... No, I got to go give a speech. And you got the president at 11, whatever. Yeah, I got to go to the White House. I got a lot going on.

It feels like a little bit of a metaphor that in your final interview with Ryan, the president kind of comes bounding in. Yeah, it did. I mean, it was almost too easy, right? I mean, it's like, all right, metaphor alert. I mean, how do you draw this one up? Oh, he can't escape the president. But it also struck me as wholly emblematic of the moment we're living through

and of the kinds of engagements that the Speaker of the House has with the president of the United States. He put out a tweet last night that was really good, which is the goal here at the end is to reduce and eliminate trade barriers. That's where we want to get to. The sooner we get there, the better. And then let's all go focus on China. It sounds like Ryan takes whatever gratification he can in influencing the smallest possible decisions by this president.

Yeah, I think gratification might be too strong a word. I think at this point he seems something between amused on a good day and exasperated on a less good day. Or maybe it goes moment to moment. So I've never heard you talk about this, but. So, Mark, I was kind of surprised by where you turned the conversation next. Is it true that your dad was an alcoholic? I mean, I've seen that word tossed around.

Yeah, yeah. I think I know it was in 2013. I think it was in a book. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he has talked quite a bit over the years about how his father died young. He started drinking when I was 12. And, you know, they call it the Irish curse in my family. And then he died when I was 16.

This is, you know, a reason he has given. And I think it's certainly, you know, it's compelling that one of the reasons he wants to leave now is because his father didn't live beyond 55 years. And that's seven years away from his current age. So he felt like his clock is ticking. And I think that was the context he liked to talk about that in. And, you know, I'm always hesitant to obviously impose some kind of pop psychology on someone. But I was curious about how there is a classic profile of the child of an alcoholic, which in many cases is to accommodate, is to do your best to try to not provoke outrages, not provoke people who are volatile, volatile personalities, hope to sort of make

things right. Was it volatile around the house? I mean, without putting you on the couch, was it volatile around the house? Verbally. Yeah, verbally. So it was like a, it was an alcoholic. And I asked him a fairly straightforward question, which is, do you, um, like confrontation? I mean, it's a weird question, but how are you like, I mean, cause I don't seek it. I don't seek it. I don't fear it. In this job and this line of work, you're going to have it. It's going to occur. So the question is, is how do you process it? And I've strangely developed a great, great new respect for temperament. Then he sort of went in a different direction, which I was surprised by.

He said, you know, this experience as speaker has given me a new appreciation for temperament. I really believe temperament matters a great deal. In what sense? It's how you can manage people in situations. I deal with conflict constantly. In your caucus. I do, yeah. I mean, has there been an adjustment for you as Speaker dealing with two presidents, let's go to the White House, two presidents of such radically different temperaments?

I mean, has that been an adjustment for you? Yeah. Is there one temperament you prefer over the other? I know what the politics are. Well, yeah, I mean, I just really did not like Obama's policies. Right. Did you like his temperament? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just really did not like Obama's policies. Right. Did you like his temperament? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I personally liked it.

I was very surprised, though, that it provoked him to talk about temperament. I thought temperament was one of those words, I mean, sort of like tragedy in the previous conversation, that really had a greater impact because the fact that he would go immediately to temperament says to me that the temperament of the president is not something he, in his own way, has his head around or feels like he can control to any satisfaction. To me, I heard that as being not so much the whole game, but a really, really big part of the game, and maybe even one of the reasons why he's leaving. Any of this have to do with Trump at all? So you seem to end this interview kind of where you started the interview,

around the question of why Paul Ryan is leaving the House. No, it's just, it's a family clock. And it's a sense of, I've gotten done so many of the things I wanted to get done. And the remaining issue, which to me is entitlements, ain't going to get done in six months. Right. Ain't going to get done in a year. I would also say this. It is quite a message that it sends when a very ambitious 48-year-old Speaker of the House who, you know, had for many years been talked about as a presidential candidate, as really the intellectual center of the Republican Party, decides that it's not even worth having

this debate. He's going to walk away from it and just sort of cede the ground. And I think that sends a message that the Republican Party is certainly adrift. And Paul Ryan's whole thing for many, many years is I'm about ideas. I'm about winning debates. I'm about conservative principles. And these are not the kind of politics that he represents and also the kind of politics that are dominating the Republican Party. So I think Paul Ryan at a certain point thought that, you know, I'm a man without a country and I'm going to try something else for a while. So maybe, Mark, Paul Ryan's final act here of leaving is him finally speaking out and doing what it is you were prodding him to maybe do in that car ride. He's just doing it very indirectly.

It could be. I mean, it certainly sends a statement. And I think a lot of people in the Republican House, if you talk to them, would say that they took this as a statement. lot of people in the Republican House, if you talk to them, would say that they took this as a statement. I just think it's very telling in this day and age that the strongest sort of statements that Republicans make in the Donald Trump era is to walk away instead of engage them. And Paul Ryan, I think, is just the latest and certainly the highest ranking to actually make that decision and to have that debate with his feet, essentially. make that decision and to have that debate with his feet, essentially. Well, Mark, thank you very much.

Really appreciate it. Thanks, Michael. Anytime. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. You can see the flames coming up about 300, 400, 500 feet up in the air, and you can actually hear the trees popping. On Tuesday, officials said that the wildfire raging across Northern California has consumed more than 290,000 acres,

becoming the largest fire in the state's history. The fire is now nearly the size of Los Angeles, destroying more than 140 buildings and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people. Yes, this is serious. Fires are now a more part of our ordinary experience. The predictions that things would get drier and hotter are occurring, and that will continue. We're in quite a cycle. There are currently 17 active wildfires in California, which Governor Jerry Brown has attributed to climate change. Over a decade or so, we're going to have more fire, more destructive fire, more billions that will have to be spent on it. All that is the new normal that we have to face. And...

You want to stay or not? I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what. Can you believe how close this is? We are in a tie ballgame! In the closely watched special election for a House seat in Ohio, the Republican candidate, Troy Balderson, held a razor-thin lead over his Democratic opponent, Danny O'Connor, in a conservative district that voted overwhelmingly for President Trump. The close

results, a less than one percentage point lead for Balderson in a district long considered a safe seat for Republicans, highlight the party's vulnerability in this fall's midterms and the energy among Democrats after nearly two years of the Trump presidency. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.