History will judge Hastert as career ends with whimper

Not since Abraham Lincoln had a politician from Illinois come as close to being president as did Dennis Hastert.

As the disputed 2000 presidential election worked its way through the court system for weeks after the voting, some legal experts eyed the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. If the U.S. Supreme Court hadn't plucked George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from the muck before Bill Clinton's term as president ended at noon Jan. 20, 2001, the president's office would have been vacant. Hastert, the old Yorkville High School wrestling coach, might have been declared leader of the free world.

As speaker of the House, Hastert was second in line to fill a presidential vacancy throughout some of the most tumultuous years in our nation's history. Since Frederick Muhlenberg first occupied the speaker's chair in 1789, no Republican had been speaker longer than Hastert.

Yet Hastert's announcement Thursday that he'd leave Congress before his term expires was delegated to obligatory matter-of-record news coverage by the national press. On the local level, Hastert's eloquent parting words seemed overshadowed by Barry Bonds' indictment, the Democratic debate, a dinosaur discovery and the Lindsay Lohan latest.

Even in stories about Hastert, the focus often was on the special election needed to replace him in Congress. An Associated Press story summed up Hastert's longest GOP speaker rein in two sentences: "Hastert became speaker in January 1999 after two better-known party members were forced aside by scandals and intraparty rivalries. He lost the post when Democrats regained control of the House after the 2006 elections."

That's it?

"I do hope I have left a few footprints behind," Hastert told the House during his farewell address.

Colorful speakers such as Newt Gingrich (who battled President Bill Clinton) or Tip O'Neill (who was a leading critic of President Ronald Reagan) made news.

How history remembers Hastert is like that fable of the blind men who feel an elephant. The man who felt the leg proclaimed the elephant a pillar. The one who touched the tail decided an elephant was like a rope. From tusk to trunk, each man walked away with a different opinion of the elephant.

So it goes for the GOP's "Wartime Speaker."

To those who have known Hastert for decades, he might be remembered best as an earnest wrestling coach and neighbor. He spent 16 years as a teacher, and still turns around when people in his hometown holler, "Coach."

"He brought to that office the values of the heartland of America," current Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a political adversary, said of Speaker Hastert. "He holds the title of honorable … by virtue of his character, his leadership and his contribution to our country."

Even the casual political observer should remember how Hastert acted in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001.

"We were not Republicans or Democrats," Hastert said. "We were just Americans."

A reflective Hastert added, "Did we get it all right? Of course not."

A blog on the Web site of the liberal political magazine "The Nation" took that "didn't get it all right" opinion a bit further, decrying Hastert as "fundamentally flawed," "cruel and uncaring" and "The Worst Speaker in American History."

Rolling Stone magazine called the local Republican the nation's "worst congressman," claiming he let his party run wild while he profited off a federally funded highway project.

Even some conservatives criticized him as being slow to address a sex scandal involving young congressional pages and a Florida congressman.

The former history teacher seems happy to let history give him his final grade as speaker. In the meantime, Hastert just seems happy to be moving on.