speaker of the house in 2015. the prevailing view was this meant the republican party would now be led by mr. policy, the most devoted policy wonk in all the land, the man whose reason for living was to reduce deficits and the debt and boy, does he know how to do it. es for once speaker he tarted releasing odd videos made him think he was running for president in 2016 or maybe he just liked videos of himself and the sound of people applauding him. how reassuring it would be if we actually fixed the tax code, strengthened our military and paid down our debt. the sinnics will scoff. they ll say it s not possible. scoffing sinnics who don t believe we ll pay down our dent. don t you know paul ryan has
pressure that ryan needed in order to say, fine. i will take on the role of house speaker. he just didn t want it because as you ve been talking about with our colleagues this morning, he is a policy wonk. he had a job that he loved that fills that desire which was the house ways and means chair. he was in charge of the tax writing committee. so there s that and the other thing that you mentioned and it bears underscoring, paul ryan was one of the last, if not the last major republican to reluctantly get onboard with donald trump. he never campaigned with trump when he was when trump was running and wisconsin was a key state. wisconsin ended up being a pivotal state that helped elect donald trump and put him in the white house. wisconsin, of course, being paul ryan s home state, and it wasn t until after that that ryan again, reluctantly got onboard.
on the campaign trail in new hampshire, hart earned respect from some older voters by demonstrating he was more than just a policy wonk with a pretty face. he put the red suspenders on, did a little like this, and immediately walked over and picked up an ax. we were like scared to death he was going to kill somebody. and he winds up and he throws the ax, bang, hits the target dead center. he said, that was the luckiest thing i ve ever done. of course, it became the picture for about 48 hours and it seemed to be a lightning strike for him that everything was going to go his way. what do you think s going to happen tomorrow? we re number one. a major upset appears to be taking shape in the new hampshire presidential primary. it appears tonight that senator gary hart is on his way to a clear cut victory over walter mondale.
president trump has a fairly limited policy agenda that he wants to put forward. he certainly did articulate some things during the state of the union address, he talked about immigration in particular, but he s not a policy guy, he s not a policy wonk, he s not somebody who has paid over any course of his presidency paid any attention to policy and that suggests he probably isn t too focused on this, but i think one thing we should keep in mind, it had been a week since there was a press briefing and sarah huckabee sanders came out today and could absolutely have foretold at 4r50e69 80% of the questions she got there but her answered did not reflect she had a week to sit and come up with responses to them. that s emblematic of the white house. there is always some crisis. some disaster looming that president trump has tweeted out that they need to respond to and it gives them so little time to come up with a week s worth of explanations, much less looking ahead a week or ten hours.
you can expect to dominate the agenda with what you re actually trying to do on policy substance. donald trump, in part by choice because he weighs into controversies. in part by accident because he s been overtaken by events, particularly the russia investigation and the shooting, he totally squandered that opportunity. so, phillip, getting things done, getting out ahead of a cycle, a news cycle, a day, a half a day, there must be a list in this west wing of things they want to accomplish. he talked about it three weeks ago. i mean, theoretically, i think it s safe to assume that president trump has a fairly limited policy agenda that he wants to put forward. he certainly did articulate some things during the state of the union address, he talked about immigration in particular, but he s not a policy guy, he s not a policy wonk, he s not somebody who has paid over any course of his presidency paid any attention to policy and that suggests he probably isn t too focused on this, but