DENNIS HASTERT’S SAD LEGACY
The God-and-family party has to deal with its incredible ick factor
The Republican Party was in serious trouble approaching the 2006 midterm elections. President Bush’s numbers were sinking. The war in Iraq was not going well. Gasoline and food prices were skyrocketing. The government’s response to Hurricane Katrina was met with widespread anger. The GOP’s so-called culture of corruption was hurting the party with every mention of Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham.
If that weren’t enough to jeopardize Dennis Hastert’s job as speaker of the House, there was the late September resignation of Mark Foley, a six-term Republican congressman from Florida who had been discovered sending suggestive emails to a 16-year-old former congressional page.
CURIOUS DELAY
What was most curious about that scandal was the days without much of a response from Hastert. While the speaker was saying he had just learned about it along with everyone else, other GOP members said they had long ago told him what was happening. His response was that the issue had been “taken care of.” Or, as some saw it: He and the leadership were protecting Foley.
If Hastert didn’t take care of it, the voters were ready to do so. Democrats picked up 30 House seats that November, enough to win the majority and make Nancy Pelosi speaker.
One year later, Hastert resigned from Congress.
The Foley embarrassment and the speaker’s role in the scandal came to mind last week after the indictment of Hastert on charges of evading limits on cash withdrawals from banks and lying to the FBI about it. The next day, multiple reports said Hastert has been using the money to pay off a man he had allegedly sexually abused many years ago, before Hastert’s political career, when he was a high school teacher and wrestling coach.
The linkage sounded familiar: Keep quiet about Foley; keep quiet about the high school boy. It is tragic to think of the demons that followed Hastert throughout his public life spurred by any contemptible act.
Sexual misconduct is not a new phenomenon in politics. Go back to 1903, when another former speaker of the House, David Henderson, R-Iowa, was forced into retirement over the relationship he had with the daughter of a senator. In the past several decades alone, we’ve had a president im- peached over it, powerful congressional committee chairmen ousted because of it, and White House hopefuls derailed over it.
Maybe because the GOP is ostensibly the party with “family values,” it seems terribly sad — and extremely hypocritical — when Republicans are caught violating their own principles. BIPARTISAN MISCONDUCT It is not a rare occurrence: Newt Gingrich, cheating on his second wife while pushing for President Clinton’s impeachment. Henry Hyde’s “youthful indiscretion” at the age of 41. Vito Fossella, a representative of Staten Island who was so “pro family” that he had two of them. Strom Thurmond, the onetime arch-segregationist revealed as the father of a daughter conceived in the statutory rape of a black member of his household staff. The list goes on.
This is not to suggest that affairs and abuse are the same or that such misbehavior is owned by just one party. For example, the Democrat who succeeded Foley in Florida in 2006 was revealed to have had multiple affairs himself, and was defeated after one term. The list of offending lawmakers from both parties is long.
Even so, there is something “icky” about candidates running publicly on God and family platforms while violating the Ten Commandments in private. And it’s even more hypocritical when lawmakers, principally Republicans — who vote against rights for gays and lesbians — are revealed to have secret gay lives or affairs themselves.
There was universal shock and sadness from all sides when the news about Hastert broke. Friends who have known him for decades say they were absolutely stunned. His legacy — the nation’s longest-serving Republican speaker — is forever tarnished.
It’s tragic that someone in such authority — a teacher, a coach — allegedly caused such a violation in a teenager’s life. And it borders on the disgrace that he, as speaker of the House, might have learned early about the sexual misconduct of one of his fellow Republicans — also involving teenagers — and kept it covered up for as long as he could.
And that is the tragic legacy of Dennis Hastert.
Ken Rudin is the former political editor at National Public Radio. He is the host of Ken Rudin’s Political Junkie radio program.