Former United States Speaker of the House and former vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan visited OU’s Norman campus on Wednesday, telling students to engage with their communities and protect democracy.
Alongside lecturing at the Spring 2024 Presidential Speakers Series, Ryan held a public forum in the Price College of Business, where he discussed discouragement for young voters, populism's role in the modern Republican Party and the role of college students in the future of democracy.
According to Ryan, young voters are dissuaded from politics due to a lack of representation in both political parties, citing the ages of presidential candidates President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
“Younger voters are going to be drawn more towards younger people,” Ryan said. “Both parties have a problem with both of our tops of the ticket, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are basically 80 or pushing 80. Right now, younger people are seeing what's out there and are looking for something else.”
Ryan said college students are responsible for decreasing political polarization. He added students should continue community involvement following college and seek diversity.
“It's your job to try and take the sting out of the coarseness of our political dialogue and bring civility back in public conversations and the way you do that is you drop the phone and go and get yourself involved in civil society,” Ryan said. “Get involved in something out of college, where you're spending time with people who don't look or think like you or don't come from where you come from, and learn how other peoples’ perspectives work.”
Ryan said the modern Republican Party utilizes populism dedicated to a single person, Trump. He added personality-based populism is not durable, citing Trump’s potential to receive one more term.
“If your populism is untethered to any core set of ideas and principles, and in our current moment, tied to a person or a personality, that's not good populism – that's unhealthy populism,” Ryan said. “It’s not an ideology, it’s not a philosophy, it’s just a person and it’s a very inconsistent person at that.”
Populism is a political activity or idea designed to appeal to and gain the support of ordinary people.
In December, Ryan called Trump a “populist, authoritarian narcissist.” In February 2023, Ryan said he would support any Republican candidate besides Trump.
Ryan said the continuance of personality-based populism has created an internal division within the Republican Party that will repel young voters.
“In Congress today, it's red-on-red violence. It's people going after each other inside your own party,” Ryan said. “Seeing that displayed in front of you if you're young coming into politics … could be not as attractive as having a hopeful, aspirational, inclusive vision that says ‘these are the enduring founding principles of the country that made it so special, so unique, and these are 21st century applications of those principles to the problems of our time.”
Ryan said the Republican Party requires “soul-searching” following Trump’s eventual departure from the public eye. Instead of Trump-related populism, Ryan believes Republicans will need to appeal to the majority of voters, fusing nationalists and traditional conservatives.
“Some kind of fusion of those policies and ideas hopefully will manifest itself into a coherent philosophy that is capable of speaking to the needs of the country and is capable of winning the hearts and the minds of a majority of the country,” Ryan said. “But that's not going to happen until we're through this moment and this moment is built around the guy.”
Ryan told an OU Daily reporter bipartisan societal forces, including digital subjectivity through social media, are dissolving democracy.
“We're the oldest democracy in the world and we're about one generation away from losing it, so you can't take it for granted,” Ryan said. “We have a lot of strong institutions that have been built up for centuries to protect it, but we're chipping away at those institutions. It's not just one politician or one political party … it's just sort of society, it's the courses of our political debate (and) it's the digitization that is occurring.
“We've got to protect those institutions and there’s more that we need to do on that. And if we don't, shame on us.”
Following the forum, Ryan spoke at the 2024 Presidential Speakers Series dinner on Wednesday. Ryan’s speech, “The State of American Politics,” covered American democracy’s status and polarization’s role in democratic destabilization, considering democracy as “under duress” through the rise of technological subjectivity.
Ryan cited mass digitization of media, internal political strife and subjectivity as contributors to democratic destabilization. During the speech, Ryan said digital algorithms fortify individuals’ biases and create intolerance for opposing viewpoints.
In an email to OU Daily before the event, an OU spokesperson wrote that recording Ryan’s speech was not allowed. Previously, OU Daily had been allowed to record and report on the Presidential Speakers Series dinners. For this event, the spokesperson said Ryan had requested media availability during the day rather than at the dinner.
Ryan’s career
Ryan began his congressional career as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Wisconsin’s first congressional district in 1999. Ryan served in the House of Representatives until 2019, being reelected eight times.
In 2012, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney chose Ryan as his running mate.
On Oct. 29, 2015, Ryan became the 54th Speaker of the House of Representatives. Ryan resigned as Speaker of the House in January 2019, exiting Congress in its entirety.
Ryan is currently a member of the board of directors for multiple organizations, including the Fox Corporation, which owns Fox News, Fox Sports and affiliated Fox Broadcasting, Shine Technologies, a fusion company that seeks to use fusion in multiple applications, and Xactus, a national mortgage provider. He also serves on the Board of Trustees for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In 2019, Ryan founded the American Idea Foundation, a nonprofit organization that analyzes organizations dealing with local issues to influence public policymakers.
This story was edited by Peggy Dodd, Ismael Lele and Anusha Fathepure.
