Former vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who had been widely expected to make a run for the White House in 2016, has announced that he is planning to quit politics within 10 years.
"I'm not going to be in Congress 10 years from now," the Wisconsin congressman
told the National Journal in a long feature on him called Exit Strategy. "I can be definitive about that. No. God, no. I've already been there 16 years.
"I don't want to be a career guy. Even though I've been there a long time, where you could already say that ... it's just, I don't want to spend my adult life in Congress."
Ryan, who was Mitt Romney’s Republican running mate in 2012, indicated during the interview with the Journal’s Tim Alberta that he is not interested in a campaign to be the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2016, although he’s not entirely ruling it out, either.
"The president thing, it doesn't have to be me," he said. "I just want us to win. I just want to get these policies passed."
Following the GOP shellacking of the Democrats in the midterm elections Tuesday, Ryan had
fueled suggestions that he planned to run in 2016 when he said that presumed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was "very beatable."
But in the Journal article, he scoffed at reports that he aspired to be the president.
"First of all, I don't have this really huge ego that some have, where they think, 'I'm the savior. I'm the guy.' I don't think like that. Second of all, I'm a normal person who likes being a normal person. Meaning, a normal family, and a normal life, living normally."
However, he appeared to be keeping the door ajar just a bit when he added, "But I know I could do the job."
Ryan also revealed that there's "zero chance" of Romney running in 2016, while he hinted that, apart from Romney, there is not another candidate that he's really excited about.
The congressman said he has no interest in taking over the House leadership from John Boehner, while admitting that he could already have been preparing to succeed him as speaker.
"I've never wanted to be speaker," said Ryan, noting that the constant travel would take too much time away from his family life with his wife Janna and three kids in the small town of Janesville, Wisconsin. "I know myself very well, and I know where I'm happy. I like spending my time on policymaking."
The 44-year-old politician, who has been busy promoting his book
"The Way Forward”, says he hopes to become chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which would give him power to enact new tax codes and address entitlements.
In December 2013, Ryan and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray negotiated a two-year, bipartisan budget, the first to pass Congress with the two chambers controlled by different parties since 1986.
"I want to be an impactful member of Congress," said Ryan, who took office in 1999. "I want to make a big difference. But then I want to leave and go do something else. I want to be young enough where I can go do something else with my life."
Ryan, who found his father dead at 55, added: "I have this sense of urgency about me. Life is short. You'd better make the most of it."
He plans to make a decision next year on whether he will join the race for the White House. Hypothetically, if Ryan does run in 2016 and is elected for two terms, he would be leaving Washington, D.C., in 10 years.
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