Measuring Hyde's mark on history

It was November 1974, and Americans were going to the polls for the first time since Richard Nixon had resigned in disgrace three months earlier.

Motivated in part by disgust over Watergate and in part by economic worries, voters used those midterm elections to pound lumps on the Republican Party, handing Democrats a 49-seat gain in the U.S. House. Only 16 new Republicans won election to the House. One of them was Henry Hyde.

Years and generations will pass before history composes a final draft of the West suburban Republican's 32 years in Congress. Much will depend on how the passing years affect perceptions of Hyde's role in one of the great policy debates of his era, abortion; one of the rarest of national events, the impeachment of a president; and a major government scandal, Iran-Contra.

One footnote, though, may mark the ability of Hyde, who will be laid to rest today, to swim against the tide, first by winning his seat as a post-Watergate Republican and then by enduring in Washington far longer than the norm.

More Coverage Stories House GOP leader: 'Hyde was my hero' [12/7/07]

"Most congressmen go in and out of office in 10 years or so, so their legacy usually is not that profound even in their own district or state," said Dick Simpson, head of the political science department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. For that reason alone, Simpson said, Hyde will be "in the category of long-term, significant members of Congress."

But even among long-term members of the House, few leave a lasting mark beyond their time in office. They do not work on Washington's center stage, and 435 of them hold office at any given time. Several historians note that Thomas "Tip" O'Neill and Newt Gingrich, both speakers, top the list of House members from recent decades who are guaranteed a spot in history books, O'Neill for his colorful personality and leadership during the Democrats' long hold on the House, Gingrich for engineering the GOP's capture of the House majority in 1994.

But the fact that Hyde stood near the center of the abortion, impeachment and Iran-Contra controversies virtually ensures that historians will note his work, too, one way or another.

George Nash, historian and author of "The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945," said Hyde's authorship of the amendment that bears his name and restricts federal funding of abortions, will "stand as a significant marker in the debate" no matter how the ongoing policy battle eventually is resolved. That, the Massachusetts-based historian said, is in part because it represents a rare national policy triumph for abortion foes.

"You can't find many examples of federal restrictions on abortion in the post Roe vs. Wade years," Nash said.

Sarah Binder, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said the Hyde Amendment's significance might be magnified by the way in which it emerged.

"What's kind of stunning about this is that Hyde was never even an elected member of the Republican leadership," Binder said. "He comes up with this amendment, right after the Roe vs. Wade ruling, and it sticks. Here he is, a Republican House member in the post-Watergate years, and to have that kind of indelible impact so soon is a testament to the importance of the issue but also to his tenacity in putting his imprint on it."

Simpson attributes Hyde's success on the amendment to his ability to read the political landscape and build his case accordingly.

"There was a bit of a backlash," Simpson explained, "over whether Roe vs. Wade would open the door too wide on access to abortion. He was able to convince Congress that public opinion was swinging the other way, able to convince other members of Congress that this was a good compromise."

Some observers expect that history will be less gracious in assessing Hyde's role as House manager of the 1998 impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.

E.J. Dionne, a Washington Post columnist and professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, expects that the passing years will heighten criticism of Hyde in that regard.

"If you believe, as I do, that the impeachment will go down as more of a partisan act than as an act of statesmanship, then it's unfortunate for Hyde's legacy," Dionne said, "because before that, there were an awful lot of people who disagreed with him who nonetheless had a lot of respect for his integrity."

Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University history professor, famously told House members in 1998 that if they voted for impeachment out of essentially partisan motivation that "history will track you down and condemn you for your cravenness."

Much more time must pass, Wilentz now says, before anyone can tell whom history will track down. Even now, though, he notes, some who pursued impeachment aggressively no longer defend their action, an indication, he thinks, that the proceedings against Clinton will look worse as time passes.

Wilentz is most critical of Hyde and others who pursued impeachment for what he considers potential constitutional harm by lowering the bar and standards for impeachment.

Wilentz said, too, that Hyde assumed contradictory views in Iran-Contra testimony and impeachment procedures.

"In the case of Iran-Contra, he defended telling lies over matters of political importance to the state, which gave the president a lot of power without accountability to Congress," Wilentz said. "Then, he came out in favor of impeachment for lying about a private matter. There's a certain irony in the position he took in 1987 and the position he took in 1998."

Nash, noting that "history can take some funny turns," said the eventual take on Hyde's impeachment involvement might pivot on how the rest of Clinton's story develops.

If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency and serves a term or two with relative success, Nash says, her husband's own stock might rise, in reverse correlation to those who impeached him. If, by contrast, the former president inadvertently torpedoes his wife's candidacy, or if she is elected and he does not fare well during her presidency, then his impeachment might appear less severe.

Wilentz acknowledged that those sorts of perceptions matter, but added, "To me, this was always less about the personality (of Bill Clinton) than about the Constitution."

Still, even a historian as relatively critical of Hyde as Wilentz says the suburban Republican will have a larger spot on history pages than most House members.

"You can't write about the history of the pro-life movement or the Iran-Contra story or the impeachment story without writing about him," Wilentz said.

Nash agreed. "As the history of the Reagan era is written, he will be mentioned as a main voice in the conservative movement, which is more than a vast majority of congressmen can hope for."