Paul Ryan came to Congress as a Jack Kemp conservative and will depart as a Donald Trump Republican.
It's more complicated than that, certainly. History requires nuance and texture. But legacies are reductive by nature. The House speaker announced his retirement Wednesday, closing a messy and mesmerizing chapter in the history of the Republican Party. And for the affable Wisconsin kid who moved to Washington a quarter-century ago, eager to make his mark on fiscal policy, the harsh reality is that he might be remembered more for accommodating the impulses of the 45th president than for crafting a generational overhaul of the tax code.
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