Paul Ryan's Legacy Defines the Race He's Leaving Behind

JANESVILLE, Wis.—Barry Badertscher hoped Paul Ryan would be president someday.

He’s voted for Janesville’s most famous native son every two years, and like so many in this small, Democratic city in southeast Wisconsin, Badertscher, 53, knows the Ryans socially. He owns a commercial real-estate business, and his name is emblazoned on the firm’s signs scattered throughout town. Badertscher watched proudly as Ryan became the quintessential local-boy-makes-good over the last 20 years: winning a seat in Congress at the age of 28, then becoming the policy point man of the GOP’s “Young Guns” triumvirate a decade later, the vice-presidential nominee in 2012, and finally speaker of the House.

“I was thinking of where the presidential library would be. I would have bought the land,” Badertscher told me, no more than half-joking, as we sat in his office on a recent weekday morning.

But after two decades in the House, Ryan is returning home to Janesville as a 48-year-old congressional retiree, his political career cut short and the light of his once-bright star darkened by the shadow of Donald Trump. Also because of Trump, Badertscher, who was named after Barry Goldwater, is no longer a Republican. “We haven’t stood up to bad behavior,” he said, referring to his former party.  “I always thought we were kind of the gentlemen. I had higher expectations of us.”

Badertscher remains a big Ryan fan—“We’re all proud of him,” he told me—but his disappointment in the GOP’s enabling of Trump’s excesses extends at least partly to the speaker. “I wish he would have