House Republicans became what they beheld.

HOUSE Republicans revised their ethical rules to protect the political perch of their majority leader, Tom DeLay, who may face indictment from a district attorney back home in Texas. Existing rules would have forced DeLay to step down if indicted. So Republicans changed the rules.

Different people had different reactions to the move. Some reeled at the hypocrisy; others were merely repulsed by the cynicism. Myself, I was struck by the poignancy of the moment.

Poignancy? Yes, indeed. For many of us, this is already a poignant season in Washington. Exactly a decade has passed since the capital was caught in the dizziest period anyone then could remember. Against all odds, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years.

As a veteran conservative journalist said then, shouting over the din at one of the parties that began election day 1994 and seemed to go on for months: "This is everything we've ever dreamed of."

And now, on its 10th anniversary, that original "Republican Revolution" is definitively over. The 2004 House Republicans have become true successors to the sclerotic, in-bred 1993 House Democrats they came to town to unseat.

The class of 1994 was swept into office in a whirlwind of libertarian passion, or so its members thought. They pledged to dismantle at least three federal departments--Commerce, Education and Energy--and a host of the smaller alphabet-soup agencies that stand as symbols of the government's comprehensive busybodyism.

Some of us who covered the "Republican Revolution" were skeptical. But surely the National Endowment for the Arts--to cite one overripe example--would go. "The NEA," said a statement issued by the House leadership in 1995, "shall cease to exist in two years."

Almost two years to the day after issuing that statement, House Republicans held a heating designed to gather support for increasing the endowment's budget.

In 1996, House Republicans passed a resolution pledging to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, as a marker, they said, of their continuing revolutionary zeal.

The resolution was notable for two reasons. First, the idea was stunningly radical. Second, most of the members who voted for it must have known it wasn't going to happen.

Thus was a crucial point reached in the evolution of House Republicans: They managed to appear crazy and cynical at the same time. The cynicism grew. House Republicans abandoned federalism, one of the party's bedrock principles, by imposing on all 50 states national standards for, of all things, drunk driving and--you'll think I'm kidding but I'm not--the water flow in household flush toilets.

In the interest of fairness, we should note that the Class of 1994 had some successes. Under President Bill Clinton they goaded Congress into passing a significant reform of federal welfare and agricultural programs. They also rewrote internal House rules and restrained spending enough to balance, briefly, the federal budget.

Buy internal House reforms are easily undone when it's deemed convenient. The agriculture reform of 1997, which pushed farmers toward a free market system, was effectively undone by a new "reform" in 2002. Indeed, those early successes, temporary as most were, are as suggestive as the failures.

Which brought us to the sorry DeLay spectacle. Along with my friend's optimism from 10 years ago, I was reminded of another quote from the lawman in the great movie "The Untouchables," whose obsession with jailing Al Capone drives him to do things he thought he would never do:

"I have broken every law that 1 had sworn to uphold, and I have become what I beheld."

Andrew Ferguson is a columnist for Bloomberg News. Mark Lacter's column appears on page 27.