With Newt Gingrich discredited and his designated successor, Louisiana Rep. Bob Livingston, taking himself out of contention after confessing he had been unfaithful to his wife, the party turned to the grandfatherly Hastert, a former high-school teacher and wrestling coach with an impeccable personal life.
Never a strong leader but a good public face, Hastert was the congenial front man for a party whose real power was Tom DeLay. Love him or loath him, DeLay ran the House with a steely precision, punishing anybody who crossed him and serving up Republican majorities for whatever the White House wanted. After DeLay left earlier this year, the Republicans drifted, unable to fasten on an agenda and vulnerable to the charge they were a “do-nothing Congress.”
With the Democrats needing only 15 seats to take control of the House, it’s not surprising that the sex scandal involving Florida Republican Mark Foley morphed with stunning speed into a leadership crisis for the Republicans. Hastert’s lackadaisical handling of Foley’s “overly friendly” e-mails to a teenage boy serving as a congressional page exposed the speaker’s weakness as a leader. Hastert took the easy way out, apparently hoping any impropriety could be contained. Either he didn’t recognize the potential seriousness of the problem, or worse, he knew what lay ahead and chose to protect his Republican majority until after the election. Whatever the reason, it could mean he’s finished as speaker.
Republicans and Democrats alike privately put the odds at 50-50 that Hastert keeps his position. With the House in recess for the election campaign, a beleaguered Hastert returned to Capitol Hill for a cameo appearance, issuing a terse statement and refusing to take questions. Religious right leaders are hammering him, a rebellion that could cost him his job. The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper, reflecting the uproar on the right, called upon Hastert to resign. “Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation … or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away.”
A former Republican staffer who handled damage control during an earlier sex scandal involving a member of Congress said there’s a pattern in Washington. Once a scandal gets going, then it really gets going, and with Foley hidden away undergoing treatment for substance abuse, the clamor is for somebody to pay the price—and Hastert is the likely figure. Like so many before him in the clubby world of Capitol Hill, Hastert’s first inclination was to protect one of his own. That changed with the public revelation of the e-mails. “The minute anybody shines a light into the club, the rats go scurrying into the corners; it’s pretty disgusting behavior.” says the former GOP staffer. Republicans are furious at Hastert for letting the Foley scandal erupt the way it has. They feel he has not protected them, that he expects them to take the bullet for him, not the other way around. They’re still angry that he made them vote for DeLay as majority leader after he had been indicted. DeLay then turned around and announced he was relinquishing the post and wouldn’t run for election, handing the opposition a club to use against Republicans.
Thrust into a leadership job he never sought, Hastert is an accidental leader. “He’s what Truman could have become if he hadn’t risen to the challenge,” says a Republican lobbyist, reflecting widespread dissatisfaction—if not disgust—with the way Hastert has settled into his job as Speaker. “He’s not a leader. He’s gotten fatter and more comfortable in that job. He’s gotten rich, and he’s running around the country attending fundraisers for people who couldn’t lose their election if they tried.” Last year, Hastert and two business partners sold a parcel of land west of Chicago for at least $1.5 million in profit—only months after he had “earmarked” hundreds of millions in federal funding for a controversial highway project just a few miles away.
If Hastert were to step down, there is no obvious interim successor. The Washington Times suggests the venerable Henry Hyde, who at 82 is not running for re-election, as somebody to guide the party through the next few months. Others would like a fresh face and a new generation like Louisiana’s Joel McCreary, 57, or even Virginia’s Eric Cantor, 43. Republicans are in enough trouble to take a chance on a radical shakeup, but the House is such an insular place, nobody is betting on it.
