My deep dismay and disillusionment with Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) began with the 2003 House vote on the Medicare prescription drug plan--the infamous three-hour vote, from 3 to 6 a.m.

Resident Scholar Norman J. Ornstein

The Speaker engineered the time and length of the vote, despite the House norm of finishing votes within 15 minutes. Going against tradition, the Speaker went to the floor to lobby during the vote. Even more shocking, he escorted a Cabinet officer, the secretary of Health and Human Services, onto the floor to twist arms.

Those acts showed that he was a Speaker who put raw partisan politics above the dignity and constraints of a constitutional office that makes him leader of the entire institution and only secondarily the leader of a party. This was not a passive Speaker, an amiable glad-hander who was a puppet to then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas); this was an aggressive Speaker who took charge, with an ends-justify-the-means, win-at-any-cost mentality.

The Medicare vote was deeply troubling, but it was nothing compared to the ethics committee fiasco at the start of the 109th Congress. After the panel did its duty and issued three rebukes to DeLay, the Speaker fired Standards of Official Conduct Chairman Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), and two GOP panel members, Reps. Kenny Hulshof (Mo.) and Steven LaTourette (Ohio). The Speaker’s excuse for firing Hefley, a conservative with flinty integrity, was that he’d reached his term limit. Yet Hastert had waived the term limit for Rules Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.). And neither Hulshof nor LaTourette had reached any term limit; they were flat-out canned for doing their job.

Hastert then picked loyalist Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) to replace Hefley, with the obvious prospect that Hastings could move up to chair Rules if he did not stray on ethics. Hastert also added Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a DeLay loyalist who had contributed to the DeLay legal defense fund, at a time when the only pending ethics matter was related to DeLay. What Hastert did with the ethics panel was a direct affront to propriety and a clear sign that the integrity of the House took a back seat to protecting DeLay and other Republicans from ethics charges.

The Speaker also pushed the House Republican Conference to alter its rules so DeLay could stay as Majority Leader even if he were indicted in Texas. Some GOP Members have tried to defend the Speaker to me by suggesting that he was only acting on the advice of his counsel, Ted Van Der Meid. That may or may not be true--but he is the Speaker, and he knew the implications full well (or should have).

I have written repeatedly over the past few years about Hastert’s behavior as Speaker, but few other news outlets have altered the common story line--that is, good ol’ boy Denny Hastert, amiable, a real House guy, passive, simply a front man for Tom DeLay.

To anyone who did connect the dots, it was not a shock that the Speaker would react to the news that then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) had engaged in highly questionable exchanges with a young male page by pushing it to the side, ignoring it and hoping it would go away until after November. This is simply not a man whose first impulse would be to protect the integrity of the House, or to put pages above the political expediency of preventing yet another scandal in an election year.

The Foley scandal is a pivotal event--very likely the tipping point in the elections, and another stiff test for the House to demonstrate some trace elements of institutional integrity. This is about Mark Foley, a dynamic, savvy and capable Member of Congress who shattered the trust imparted in him as a lawmaker. Even more, though, it is about the Speaker and other Republican leaders who showed why Congress genuinely is the broken branch.

Look at all the explanations given for Hastert, Reps. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) and John Shimkus (R-Ill.), among others, sitting on the information they had for months on end, including who knew what and when, talking about the innocuous nature of the e-mails they knew about and blaming subordinates or superiors. They do not wash. This was a cover-up, plain and simple.

Those initial e-mails may not have been graphic or sexually explicit, but they had flashing neon “danger” signs all over them. There have been page scandals before, just as there have been scandals involving priests and young parishioners and youngsters preyed upon by people in positions of authority. How could any of these leaders have known the bare bones of this story and not acted--at minimum, to demand of Foley any additional e-mails or other communications he had had with pages, and an accounting of any activities he had engaged in with them, such as dinner or other contact outside the official setting? And how could a Speaker not demand at least that the full page board be assembled to deal with this problem?

For a Speaker who openly and repeatedly has said that what mattered was the majority of the majority--not the majority of the House--it was wholly predictable that he would not bring Democratic Rep. Dale Kildee (Mich.) into the deliberations, but rather rely on his home-state buddy Shimkus. And that partisan-first mentality did not end with the explosion of revelations; when Hastert and Shimkus issued a call for reform of the page system a couple of days ago, they still did not notify or bring in Kildee!

Only once during his tenure as Speaker has Hastert leapt to protect the integrity of the legislative branch--when he joined with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to take on the FBI and Justice Department for raiding the office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.). He was right, in my view. But I am now left to believe that he did so not because of a visceral reaction to protect the House, but rather out of fear that the Jefferson raid would be followed by lots of others, targeting many Republicans.

It has been fascinating to watch Republicans and conservatives rally behind the Speaker the past few days, especially after The Washington Times called for his resignation. From President Bush to Rush Limbaugh, the defense of the Speaker has ranged from “he didn’t know” to “he has been a good Speaker--the good cop to Tom DeLay’s bad cop” to “even if he knew, rally behind him and the others anyway, because the Supreme Court is at stake.”

How foolish and misguided. Where are minimal standards of acceptable conduct by the people who lead Congress? Whatever those standards may be, neither the Speaker nor the other lawmakers who sat on the Foley revelations measured up. Period.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI.