WASHINGTON — To most Americans, the speaker of the House is the man (and in one case, the woman) sitting next to the vice president during the State of the Union address to Congress, and the one who goes on television now and then to denounce the opposing party's ideas.
But the speaker's daily duties, by dint of House rules, traditions and institutional realities, are myriad and relentless. He oversees legislative strategy sessions, reaches out to the Senate and the White House on pending bills and negotiations, oversees the Capitol ("A chunk of plaster just fell on someone's head!"), unveils statues and fends off the news media. And of course he raises money and more money.
For Rep. Paul Ryan, the man who House Republicans nominated Wednesday to be the 62nd speaker of the House, many of those traditions are as foreign as his beloved Brett Favre of the Green Bay Packers playing in a Vikings' uniform.
Ryan is now set to be installed as speaker in a formal vote on the House floor on Thursday.
"The speaker has a huge institutional role," said Matthew Green, a politics professor at the Catholic University of America and an authority on modern speakers. "He is speaker of the whole House. There is a partisan role but also a ceremonial role. It is a very difficult job with a lot of responsibilities."
The role is one part landlord, the person who opens the House doors most days. It is another part partisan politician, who coordinates his party's messaging and legislative goals. And it is a final part parent to 434 other members, who must be told in excruciating terms exactly why they need to vote a certain way, or who come as supplicants wanting to be placed next to someone important at an event.
In his reluctant promotion from chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to what is often called the second most powerful job in Washington, Ryan has a nontraditional pedigree for his new responsibilities. Not only will he be the youngest speaker in more than a century, he is also a policy wonk rather than the typical veteran lawmaker who has risen through party ranks. Unlike virtually all of his predecessors, Ryan has not served a day in senior House leadership.
His supporters are not terribly worried. They say Ryan may lack administrative experience but makes up for it in the political chops he earned as his party's nominee for vice president in 2012. "He knows because he has been there," said Terry Holt, a former adviser to many senior Hill Republicans. "That is what next year is going to be about."
A speaker's day begins early, with coffee and meetings with senior staff members.
The first order of business outside his palatial office suite in the Capitol is to open the House chamber, which the speaker must do at least three days a week. John A. Boehner, the exiting speaker, marches into the chamber most days with the sergeant-at-arms and announces that "the House will be in order" as he stands with a few other early birds for the Pledge of Allegiance.
From there, most of the speaker's day is filled with meetings with his leadership team, committee leaders, lobbyists, constituents, Senate leaders and White House officials.
While the speaker traditionally has a "member services" person to help with requests, he still meets with freshman members of Congress and others who come with problems — many, many problems.
"If you are a member and you are unhappy about something, odds are you are going to go to the speaker," Green said. "It can be stuff that seems extremely minor and even trivial, but to lawmakers can be extremely important. And he has to listen and try to help."
The speaker is not expected to vote and rarely does, but he does have to sign the bills and send them to the House parliamentarian. If a foreign dignitary comes to Capitol Hill, the speaker is the official host. He also awards the congressional gold medals and lights the Capitol Christmas tree.
Nights — and many mornings — are usually spent in Washington restaurants raising money for members of the party. Weekends are usually whiled away in airports on multistate tours, doing more of the same.
Both Boehner and his predecessor Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., were prodigious fundraisers who brought in hundreds of millions of dollars for their parties. Boehner, R-Ohio, sometimes crisscrossed the country by bus during the August congressional recess and collected checks for the party while he squeezed in rounds of golf. Ryan so far has professed a reluctance to raise money as aggressively.
A critical part of the speaker's job is helping legislation float from committee rooms to the House floor, but the speaker can also push his own policy agenda.
Sam Rayburn, D-Texas, the longest-serving speaker, pushed for passage of legislation that would exclude natural gas producers from federal regulation — legislation that passed over his own party's objections.
Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who was the speaker during the Clinton administration, was preoccupied with wild animals, and helped kill a measure that would have cut $800,000 from a program protecting endangered animals in Africa, even though it was offered by a fellow Republican.
J. Dennis Hastert, who was speaker at the end of the Clinton era and for most of the subsequent Bush administration, was concerned about drug trafficking in Central America and added billions of dollars in anti-narcotic assistance there. Hastert, a Republican who pleaded guilty on Wednesday to trying to evade federal banking laws, was also mindful of the interests of Boeing, which relocated its headquarters to Illinois, his home state.
Pelosi had a large "Green the Capitol" initiative that replaced plastic-foam cafeteria items with recyclable materials and switched the Capitol Power Plant from coal to natural gas, although Republicans killed some of it in 2011.
Boehner said Tuesday that his best day as speaker was last week, when the House voted to reauthorize a voucher program for low-income students in the District of Columbia to attend private schools, a pet project of his for years.
Speakers tend not to be in the headlines as much as presidents, unless
something really bad is happening, as when Rep. Robert L. Livingston, R-La., resigned abruptly before he could take the speaker's gavel in 1998 after admitting extramarital affairs. Hastert was quickly installed in his stead.
But speakers have an impact on how policy comes together. A central role is to make sure that House committees are working in concert, not in conflict.
Rayburn waged a battle in early 1961 to expand the membership of the House Rules Committee to 15 from 12, diluting the power of Southern segregationists and paving the way for the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.
Joseph G. Cannon of Illinois, who was speaker from 1903 to 1911, consolidated every ounce of power into the speaker's portfolio, including making all committee assignments and running the Rules Committee. Fed up, members eventually stripped him of most of his powers.
Henry Clay of Kentucky, who was speaker for most of the period between 1811 and 1825, transformed the speakership from traffic cop to policy driver. As speaker, Thomas Brackett Reed of Maine changed the House rules in the 1880s to end what was essentially a House filibuster.
Members of Congress are curious to see how Ryan handles the job.
"It is a very, very tricky set of skills," said John Lawrence, who served as chief of staff to Pelosi and is now teaching and writing a book on congressional reform. "And we really don't know if Paul Ryan has those skills."