Saturday Morning Post: The Weekly View from Washington

Unknowns are still swirling around the bombshell indictment of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. The low-key Illinois Republican was eight years removed from public life and comfortably established in a K Street sinecure when the news first landed Thursday. The 73-year-old is alleged to have lied to federal investigators about $3.5 million in hush money he paid to a long-time acquaintance. What, precisely, the longest-serving GOP speaker in history was trying to conceal remains part of the mystery, though several outlets are now reporting what many in Washington immediately suspected — that it involves sexual wrongdoing with a student during his days as a high school teacher and wrestling coach. The specter of the ugliness lurking behind the charging document has already cost Hastert his lobbying gig at Dickstein Shapiro and his CME Group directorship.

It also puts a (delayed) capstone on what must rank as the dirtiest Congress in modern history. Hastert rose through Republican ranks because he presented as a squeaky-clean foil to the rest of Texan Tom DeLay’s viperous crew. Officially Hastert’s lieutenant, DeLay in fact pulled the strings, institutionalizing a mode of corruption with major sweep. It reached full flower in the 109th Congress, from 2005 to 2006. Most will remember that era for the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, the sprawling pay-to-play scheme that sent former Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) to prison, along with a handful former top DeLay aides and Bush administration officials, and implicated many others.

But that was only the center ring in a circus of misconduct. There was also the illegal land-swap deal then-Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) engineered for a business partner that later landed him a three-year prison stay; the raid of then-Rep. Bill Jefferson’s (D-La.) home that turned up $90,000 worth of cash bribes hidden among pie crusts in his freezer, earning him to a thirteen-year sentence; and the $2.4 million in bribes then-Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.) pocketed from defense contractors, good for an eight-year sentence. And there were many more federal investigations, including a probe of the official actions then-Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.) traded for favors from lobbyists; the look into whether then-Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) used his office to help his daughter win lobbying work from Russian and Serbian firms; and another into whether Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) took bribes and illegal gifts from an oil pipeline company back home. Then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) supplied the rotted cherry on top weeks before the 2006 midterms when he was outed for sending sexually explicit messages to teenaged House pages. Outrage over Foley’s behavior and the Republican leadership team’s bumbling response helped seal an electoral route that drove Hastert from power — and, in retrospect, darkly previewed this week’s allegations.

Democrats swept in as the clean-up squad, instituting strict new lobbying and ethics rules. Republicans later added to those reforms by banning earmarks. The results are evident in this Congress. The closest it’s featured to a replay of the 109th’s antics: The overspending that recently forced Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) to resign a seat nearby Hastert’s old one. Schock looks like a Cub Scout by comparison. There are those who argue cleaner government yielded the sclerosis that’s earned this Congress its rock-bottom approval ratings. But as Hastert’s humiliation unfolds, it’s worth considering whether the mess he presided over is really preferable.