Abhorring a vacuum: the demise of Hastert's majority.

AS the Republican House majority stumbled toward its demise, Speaker Dennis Hastert evoked images of the kindly old uncle staying a bit too long at Thanksgiving dinner. In his presence, everyone around the table was smiling and laughing. But whenever he was out of earshot, they would mutter to one another in hushed tones, "When is he going to leave?" Or, perhaps more appropriately in Hastert's case, "When is he going to lead?"

According to Republican insiders on and off Capitol Hill, the answer to both questions was the same: never. Their party lost at least 28 seats in the House and six in the Senate, giving Democrats control of Congress and consigning Hastert to the lowly status of a rank-and-file minority member. But these loyal Republicans still don't have the heart to openly pin any blame on their "coach" for this season's performance.

Only in anonymous comments, like those whispers in the family kitchen, are Republicans willing to be frank in assessing Uncle Denny. "A bumbling Mr. Magoo" is how one House GOP leadership aide describes Hastert's current image. "He waited too long to say the buck stops here," says another top leadership staffer. "You can suggest he was not served well by his staff, but he's the one who hired his staff," points out a Republican lobbyist and former political operative. Almost nobody, though, wants to be identified by name criticizing Hastert. "Nobody wants to tap-dance on the grave," explains the top leadership staffer.

But did there have to be a grave to dance on? While Iraq and President Bush's unpopularity are widely accepted as the chief culprits in the GOP's losses, the congressional Republicans badly hurt themselves with scandal. One exit poll found that 41 percent of voters rated corruption as "extremely important" in deciding whom to vote for. At least 10 of the 35 GOP-held House and Senate seats that switched hands did so because of incumbents' ethics. If the unpopularity of the war and the president were the sparks that would eventually burn down the House (and Senate), it was the air of scandal that provided "oxygen for the fire," as Virginia's Republican congressman Tom Davis puts it.

Few Americans, of course, could tell the difference between a Bob Ney and a Tom DeLay, but the stench of corruption wafting from the Beltway was unmistakable. One House Republican leadership aide speculates that voters probably didn't even know (or care) about the party affiliation of Louisiana congressman William Jefferson: "They just heard he had $90K in his freezer. It didn't matter that he was a Democrat. They just thought, 'Washington is a cesspool, throw them all out.'" It would have taken decisive action and strong leadership to battle this impulse, and Hastert wasn't up to it.

Hastert ascended to the top position in the House during the scandal-filled year of 1998. Speaker Newt Gingrich had stepped down under a cloud of bad publicity, and his resignation had been followed by that of congressman Bob Livingston, who had admitted to marital infidelity. In this environment, Hastert was chosen for Speaker in part because of his upright image. Conciliatory, fair-minded, and generous to a fault, the Illinois schoolteacher was everything that DeLay and former majority leader Dick Armey were not. Unfortunately, however, many of these qualities made him ill-equipped to manage the House majority. Because of his gentle operating style, Hastert was not a powerful Speaker in the mode of a Rayburn, O'Neill, or Gingrich. Congressman Davis, a habitual straight-talker, explains that Hastert is "a good man, a good coach, but not a leader." Davis adds, however, that the Speaker was merely "a creature of the caucus." It was the members of the House GOP who elected him.

The real beginning of the GOP's demise came with the accusations of illegal fundraising against majority leader Tom DeLay. Putting aside the legal merits of DeLay's case, the politics and perception of it were disastrous. In anticipation of DeLay's indictment, Republicans collectively decided to drop an internal rule forcing indicted leaders to step down from their posts--a reform they had adopted in 1993 to contrast their ethics with those of the Democratic majority. Motivated by a desire not to punish DeLay without cause, this move was understandable but costly: "The response was not to self-police, but to change the rule," says a lobbyist and former leadership staffer. Damage control came first. "It was viewed through the lens of 'How does this help us keep the majority?'"

Hastert's staff was reportedly wary of the rule change, but the Speaker ultimately deferred to his majority leader. This was the "first sign of cancer in a body that was taken over by cancer," continues the lobbyist, and Hastert was the doctor who "saw the X-rays and ignored them."

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The internal mechanism to examine ethical allegations against House members was broken. In February 2005, Hastert booted Ethics Committee chairman Joel Hefley from his position, seemingly because Hefley had been too aggressive in sniffing out Republican dirty laundry. "Hefley was run out of the [caucus] because he dared look at our own wrongdoing," says the same lobbyist who criticized the indictment-rule change. Hefley "had the moral high ground and we should've risen to his level instead of being drawn down below." Democrats balked at Hefley's departure and later sparred with Republicans over other internal rule changes Hastert pushed on the Ethics Committee. The result was a non-functioning internal-affairs unit unable to police member transgressions.

What Congress wouldn't do to itself, the Department of Justice would. Still, even when it became clear that individuals like Ney and former high-level staff members for DeLay were being probed by federal investigators in relation to the Jack Abramoff scandal, Hastert took little or no action. DeLay decided to step down from his leadership position only when a revolt of rank-and-file members became public. Ney was stripped of his chairmanship but allowed to stay in Congress. Initially, he was even permitted to seek reelection after a parade of witnesses had already implicated him in the Abramoff mess.

And then came what one Republican calls the "cherry on the sundae"--the Mark Foley scandal. Unlike the Ney and DeLay episodes, Foley's wrongdoing was uncomplicated. While Americans may not bother to understand the intricacies of earmark abuse or PAC money laundering, they can grasp cyber predation. Or, as a House leadership aide summed it up, "If you've got a story on A Current Affair, you're [screwed]."

Far from being seen as an isolated instance of one man's perversion, the Foley scandal was fueled by rumors that Hastert, his staff, and other Republicans may have known about Foley's inclinations years before they became public. "It was the way it was handled that was the disaster," says a former leadership aide. After a month of mostly good news for the GOP, and DeLay long gone, the storyline again was, "Republicans will do anything to hang on to power."

Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean admits that "the Foley issue clearly brought [the 'corrupt Congress' narrative] back," but insists that his boss "forcefully responded." Others, however, maintain that Hastert had been distracted and tired for more than a year. To Bonjean, such analysis is typical Monday-morning quarterbacking: "Whenever there's a loss, fingers will get pointed and people will assign blame. It was a variety of factors that contributed to the loss."

He's right. Compounding the difficulties in Iraq and the fallout from the assorted cases of tawdriness, not much got done legislatively. There was no major immigration bill, no heavy lifting on entitlements or health care, no significant step to curb spending, no effort on tax reform, and nothing bold on energy independence. Nor was there any sort of ethics reform brought forward that could have offered some political cover. As Davis says, "It wasn't the failure on an ethics bill that hurt us; it was the failure to do anything at all."

Ultimately, it all goes back to Tom DeLay. House Republicans had become dependent on DeLay to muscle through the tough votes, keep the caucus in line with dollops of honey and vinegar, and generally ram their agenda down Democrats' throats. When he became dogged by various ethical questions, the GOP was left in a no-win situation. If he didn't go, he would become an albatross around the party's neck in November. But his departure "proved the stereotype true," as a House leadership aide puts it: Everyone knew who had been running the show all along. With DeLay gone, there was a leadership vacuum that nobody could fill.

Certainly not the big-hearted guy sitting across the Thanksgiving table.

Mr. Martin is National Review Online's political reporter.