If the budget passes, it sets up a helpful message for Ryan as he considers both his future in the House and the 2016 presidential race: He can claim he is as a man in tune with the realities of governing. Sure, he is a conservative, but Ryan is willing dispense with the perfect in favor of the good.

As he unveiled this agreement Tuesday night in the Senate’s television studio, he made sure to mention that this is the first “divided government budget agreement since 1986.”

“As a conservative, I deal with the situation as it exists,” Ryan said. “I deal with the way things are, not necessarily the way things I want them to be. I’ve passed three budgets in a row that reflect my priorities and my principles and everything I wanted to accomplish. We’re in divided government. I realize I’m not going to get that. So I’m not going to go a mile in the direction I wanted to go to, but I will take a few steps in the right direction. This agreement takes us in the right direction, from my perspective, for the very reasons I laid out before.”…

His task is to convince enough of the 231 members of the House Republican Conference Wednesday morning that they should follow him in taking a “step in the right direction” — a tough message for a group of people who shut down the government to defund the president’s signature legislative achievement.