Bidding Congress Farewell, Paul Ryan Laments Nation’s ‘Broken’ Politics – The New York Times

Many of the House members from that base are integral parts of the outrage machine, taking their turns before the Fox News cameras and committee microphones to amp up their messaging. And Mr. Ryan did little to rein them in.

“As everyone here knows, I never wanted to become speaker,” Mr. Ryan said. “I was just a policy guy, and I like to think I still am.”

That attitude earned him derision from Mr. Trump’s inner circle, including the president’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who once said Mr. Ryan had been “born in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation.”

On Wednesday, the departing speaker was introduced by his Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, who referred to him as “the smartest kid in the room” and recounted his hero worship of Mr. Ryan as a newly elected member of Congress, when he showed up at Mr. Ryan’s office asking for an autograph.

The speaker-to-be was “awkward and shy,” Mr. Gowdy said, and told him: “Look, we’re peers, we’re colleagues, we’re equals. We don’t ask each other for autographs.”

When Mr. Gowdy was being attacked by Tea Party activists in 2011 for supporting measures to keep the government funded over the objections of a band of ultraconservative Republicans who refused to do so without spending cuts, he said Mr. Ryan had volunteered to call his detractors and try to reason with them.

“I am glad you loved the country enough to be speaker of the House,” said Mr. Gowdy, who is also retiring, calling Mr. Ryan “sacrificial.”