What’s the point of being the speaker of the House if you’re not going to be speaker of the House?
Six months ago, after Newt Gingrich, and then Bob Livingston, took the fall, Republicans turned to Illinois’ Dennis Hastert to lead the House. The chief requirement for the job at the time was that the speaker-to-be had not cheated on his wife.
Hastert qualified. But he brought more qualities to the table than marital fidelity. He’s a smart, savvy, likeable politician in the conservative mainstream, just what the GOP needed after its drive to impeach President Clinton turned sour.
Hastert’s elevation was a chance to bring some common sense back to a party that had treated the power it gained in the 1994 election like schoolboys with their first bottle of muscatel. His selection was a chance to break the Southern stranglehold of power in the House, the Georgia-to-Texas pipeline that can pound a Bible with the best of them but doesn’t recognize there is life above the Mason-Dixon line.
Hastert had a chance to do all that. Instead, he has justified all the suspicions whispered back in December that he was a nice guy, but he wasn’t wily or rascally or mean enough to lead the House of Representatives. The title of speaker was loaned to him, but the job has stayed firmly in the Southern pipeline now ruled by the House Whip, Tom “the Hammer” DeLay.
The first sign of trouble was the debate on Kosovo. Hastert backed a resolution to support the NATO bombing campaign but refused to lobby his own members to follow him. The vote was a “matter of conscience” the speaker said. He cast his own vote only at the last minute.
DeLay worked the House floor like a machine, lining up votes against the resolution and against Hastert. DeLay won.
Hastert disappeared again this week on the House debate over gun control and juvenile justice.
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Three weeks ago he publicly declared that the House would pass meaningful gun-control legislation. But gun control, he later said, was another matter of “conscience.” He wouldn’t demand a vote from his members. He wouldn’t even vote on the dozens of amendments that would shape a bill that will dominate national political debate for months and probably into the presidential campaign.
The speaker of the House wouldn’t even vote? He wouldn’t vote on one of the most hotly debated issues of the year?
Hastert’s goal seems to be to avoid leaving footprints. Meanwhile, DeLay has worked against the gun measures with a religious zeal. And the House is on its way this week to producing a gun bill that’s even flimsier than the Senate’s.
In between Kosovo and guns, there has been a steady drip of news and rumor about dissension and confusion in the House GOP ranks.
Hastert, it seems, desperately wants to convey some sense that Republican leaders are on the same page. Open warfare with his own deputies wouldn’t promote that. And war is not his style. Hastert’s not going to turn into Newt Gingrich, who knew 50 ways to punish his enemies.
But while Hastert makes all the right symbolic moves, while he shows up next to Rosa Parks and tours the South Side of Chicago and talks about bipartisanship, he has lost any pretense that he leads the Republicans in the House.
The shame is that Hastert’s political instinct, his sense of what course would be best for his party heading into the 2000 election, is dead on target. Hastert recognized, after the Senate Republicans’ game-playing over gun control blew up on them, that the House GOP leaders had to craft significant, no-gimmicks gun legislation, not have it forced on them. He was correct, but he got rolled by his own party and the National Rifle Association.
“Denny’s approach has been, let the extremists do all their hollering and screaming, let them play their hand, and ultimately they’ll see it is hurting the Republicans’ chances of keeping the House and they’ll fold,” said another Illinois congressman who knows Hastert well.
That’s pretty much the way former House Speaker Tom Foley approached the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Patience. Patience, right up until the Democrats lost the House in 1994 and Foley lost his seat.
Democrats realize that Hastert won’t exact punishment on his own party. But they have another option for him, one he hasn’t taken. Reach out to the Democrats. The Blue Dog Democrats, the conservative wing of the party, are eager to work with him. With 15 Democratic votes in Hastert’s pocket, the GOP right wing couldn’t as easily hold him hostage.
Back home in Illinois, the politicians are already speculating about Denny Hastert’s future. None of the scenarios has him staying in the speaker’s chair for very long. The sense of Democrats, and quite a few Republicans, is that the Republican love of guns and hatred of Bill Clinton is setting up a Democratic takeover of the House in 2000.
Few expect to see Hastert as speaker after the election. Few even expect he will be the Republican minority leader. He will be out. DeLay will be in, plotting to become speaker in 2002. Hastert will come home, maybe to run for governor if George Ryan calls it quits.
Of course, Hastert would be coming home with the tag of being the speaker who presided over the collapse of the Republican revolution. It wouldn’t be of his making, but he would wear the collar.
Mr. Speaker, if you’re going to go down, go down fighting.