Representative Paul Ryan, who is nominated to succeed Speaker John Boehner, arrives to a news conference after a closed-door House Republican election on Oct. 28, 2015.Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Young, personable and impassioned about – of all things – tax reform, Paul Ryan was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives on Thursday in a shift that may herald an end to the bitter partisan dysfunction paralyzing Congress.
In a roll-call vote that mixed politics and pageantry, 218 lawmakers - a majority - called out the Wisconsin Republican's name, handing the 45-year-old who once was a congressional intern the enormous task of uniting his fratricidal party and, perhaps, ushering in a new era of governance.
Mr. Ryan takes on the massive task of presiding over a chamber that has been awash in tumult ever since defiant conservatives hounded John Boehner, the embattled former speaker, into quitting last month.
Most hard-line Republicans, from the so-called Freedom Caucus, backed Mr. Ryan. Only a handful held out and voted for others.
"I don't plan to be Caesar, calling all the shots around here," he told the often-riven Republican caucus after rallying rare support from all three of its main factions, including the right-wing Freedom Caucus.
In a farewell speech, after 25 years in Congress, the last turbulent five as Speaker, Mr. Boehner said: "I leave with no regrets, no burdens … I leave the way I started, just a regular guy, humbled by the chance to do a big job."
Mr. Ryan will be the youngest Speaker in more than a century, taking over a post that combines unrivalled power with high ceremony, fundraising and a father-confessor role. Above all else, the Speaker is the gatekeeper of legislation, deciding what goes forward and what dies. The ambitious Mr. Ryan was first elected to Congress at age 28 and currently is chair of the all-important House ways and means committee that sets taxes. He has already flirted with the national political spotlight as the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2012; becoming Speaker offers him the chance to steer major change in Washington.
"We have an opportunity to turn the page, to start with a clean slate and to rebuild what has been lost," Mr. Ryan said last week.
Powerful Speakers build coalitions, move landmark legislation and deal effectively across party lines – although it never makes them popular with their party's hard core. Speakers such as Massachusetts Democrat Tip O'Neill, whose working relationship with Republican president Ronald Reagan irked many and achieved much, are regarded by history as far more important that ardent partisans such as the departing Mr. Boehner or his Democratic predecessor, Nancy Pelosi of California.
"We can make some real progress … with Paul Ryan, who is a good guy," U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden said earlier this week. "He knows this government can't function without reaching some consensus and he wants to do that."
Mr. Ryan, so far, is saying all the right things. "If I'm elected Speaker, we will begin a conversation about how to approach these big issues – as a team," he told Republicans.
But with the 2016 elections only a year away, and the Republican majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate sensing no political purpose in making sweeping deals on tough issues such as tax reform or immigration with a lame-duck Democratic President, Mr. Ryan may have to wait and hope Republicans retain their majority in the House.
With a makeshift budget and debt deal done – as Mr. Boehner poignantly put it, "I don't want to leave my successor a dirty barn" – Mr. Ryan may first turn to fence mending as the new Speaker.
Widely considered well-liked on both sides of the partisan divide on Capitol Hill, Mr. Ryan's immediate challenge will be to stem the internal bloodletting that has crippled the Republican majority. He repeatedly said he wasn't interested in becoming Speaker, agreeing only after feuding factions all rallied behind him. But the heady unity of compromise may prove short-lived. As is starkly evident on the presidential campaign trail, Republican activists are fed up with Washington insiders and the party's establishment.
And Mr. Ryan is a creature of Washington.
Unless he can fashion pragmatic unity inside the Republican caucus, he stands little chance of making legislative deals with Democrats.
Like almost every politician who comes to Washington fired by a burning ideological purity, Mr. Ryan acknowledges that the realities of governing, and fundraising, impose some pragmatism, if not crass expediency.
"Even if you come to Congress believing in limited government and fiscal prudence, once you get here you are bombarded with pressure to violate your conscience," Mr. Ryan wrote in 2010. After being the running mate of Mitt Romney in the presidential campaign in 2012, Mr. Ryan wrote another book, The Way Forward, which was both a look back at the failed effort and a manifesto for change.
For a politician who has spent more than half his life in Washington, as an intern, paid staffer, elected congressman and soon-to-be Speaker, Mr. Ryan's claim that what he wants most is to spend time with his young family in Janesville, Wis., not far from Lake Koshkonong, sometimes rings hollow.
"I cannot and will not give up my family time," he said, both before agreeing to run on the Romney ticket and when he agreed to be Speaker.
On social issues, he remains solidly conservative – against same-sex marriage and abortion – but he backed Barack Obama's huge bailouts of the auto industry and Wall Street banks.
A generation younger than most Speakers, Mr. Ryan may still harbour even greater ambitions.
Only one of the 53 Speakers before him – James Polk of Tennessee, a Democrat – went on to win election as president, in 1844.