Representative Patrick McHenry, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who briefly served as the acting House speaker earlier this fall, announced on Tuesday that he will be retiring from Congress at the end of this term, his tenth in the House. His departure will be a terrible loss not only for Republicans but for Congress as an institution, and it offers some lessons about the state of the first branch at this point.

McHenry’s trajectory is a classic example of institutional formation: He entered Congress in 2004, at the age of 29, as something of a partisan performer and bomb thrower — as he is the first to acknowledge. He had little interest in the legislative process but was always willing to get into a verbal brawl on cable news.

But with time, he came to see that the power of a legislator to make a positive difference for the country is a function of his ability to shape bargains across lines of difference, both within his party and across the aisle. He grasped the appeal of working through the institution rather than using it as a platform for building his own brand.

For McHenry, however, this didn’t mean climbing the leadership ladder to gain control of the agenda. He steadfastly refused to run for senior leadership positions, even when his friend and ally Kevin McCarthy became speaker (and frequently turned to him for advice over his formal partners on the leadership team), and even when he became the acting speaker when Republicans threw McCarthy (who just announced he will soon leave Congress) out. Instead, he focused on specializing in a few policy domains that mattered to him and to his solidly Republican district in North Carolina and gained the trust of his colleagues through calm, deliberative, and substantive policy work.

Although he’s still relatively young for a House member, at 48, he is by now a member formed by the House to serve both his constituents and his country as a seasoned legislator. He has a deep understanding of how the House works and doesn’t, and in recent years I’ve heard him several times express the sense that the House is on the verge of a constructive transformation and that he wanted to be part of it. He said the same to Politico’s Jonathan Martin just last month:

“The Congress is on the edge of the next great turn,” said McHenry. “And if you’re in a position to lead change for the long term, it’s desperately needed. That’s why you should stay. To lead that change. Make things better. Not because of how things are now, but because of how they can be.”

We now know that McHenry was speaking in part to himself in describing things this way. And we know that he wasn’t persuaded.

It’s not hard to see why. The House can be a difficult place for serious people to work at the moment. McHenry is by no means the only smart, public-spirited, legislation-minded institutionalist among House members — there is a fair number in both parties. But they are the minority, and they are constantly made to perform in a partisan circus that has too little to do with the work assigned to the national legislature in our constitutional system. It wears on them. The House has grown increasingly repulsive to precisely the kind of member who will be necessary if that next great turn is going to be a turn for the better.

But the problem is not just the partisan culture-war circus. It’s also the way that House Republicans discourage experienced leadership at the committee level. I think it’s very likely that McHenry would have stayed if he could have continued in his role as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Republicans limit their chairmen to six years in the job — just about enough time to learn to like it and to do it well. This has always been a bad idea. It strengthens party leaders over committee leaders. It renders the committee work that members do less significant and therefore less appealing to them. And it drives away precisely the members that the conference needs most.

McHenry is just such a member. He knows it, and it clearly wasn’t easy for him to leave. In his official retirement announcement, he predicted that Congress-watchers like me would write pieces like this one, and even that we would quote his very quotable statement from that Jonathan Martin piece above, and he recurred to it himself, saying:

There has been a great deal of handwringing and ink spilled about the future of this institution because some—like me—have decided to leave. Those concerns are exaggerated. I’ve seen a lot of change over twenty years. I truly feel this institution is on the verge of the next great turn. Whether it’s 1974, 1994, or 2010, we’ve seen the House evolve over time. Evolutions are often lumpy and disjointed, but at each stage, new leaders emerge. There are many smart and capable members who remain, and others are on their way. I’m confident the House is in good hands.

I hope he’s right. And I hope McHenry’s next phase is full of satisfying work and joy with his family. He has more than earned it. But I can’t help wringing my hands just a little. He will be missed in the House.