Reflections on Hastert as he starts to exit political stage

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert has begun his departure from the political stage.

Whether his final bow takes place in January 2009 when his term ends or before then, forcing a special election, is yet to be determined.

So until the curtain call is certain, here are some reflections on the once-powerful speaker and his career:

•The national political obituaries on Hastert referred to him as the "accidental speaker," owing, of course, to the strange set of circumstances during the President Clinton impeachment saga that vaulted Hastert from a low-level GOP leadership post to third in line for the presidency.

It's a term Hastert disliked, and it's easy to understand why. Even if the tag fit, it's one I tried not to overuse. After all, he did go on to become the longest-serving Republican speaker ever.

•Having covered Hastert when he was just a congressman, I can say Hastert didn't change very much after he rose to power. At least in his public persona, anyway, which is all reporters tend to have access to these days, Hastert remained low key. As more than one Republican familiar with Hastert told me last week week: Denny's Denny.

Hastert didn't hog the spotlight in D.C. Newt Gingrich he was not. Then again, that's precisely why the GOP picked him that fateful Saturday in December 1998.

Coming from the pragmatic state of Illinois, Hastert was more interested in building enough consensus to pass legislation. As speaker, that meant moving along President Bush's agenda. And that made it more difficult to reach across the aisle. You can still build coalitions from time to time in Springfield, but not really in Washington anymore, something Henry Hyde often lamented when discussing how Congress changed over his 30-plus years there.

•One of the judgment calls I had to make last week -- and took some reader criticism for -- was the omission of Hastert's land deal and pushing of the Prairie Parkway. According to news accounts, Hastert bought -- and sold at a tidy profit -- land in Plano about five miles from the location of the Hastert-pushed Prairie Parkway, which would link Interstates 80 and 88.

Hastert argued the 5.5-mile distance means the farmland he sold to a developer didn't appreciate in value because of the parkway. Given the history of how the suburbs came into being after World War II -- tollways enriching land value as people moved out of Chicago -- some may not give Hastert the benefit of the doubt on that one.

Here's why I didn't touch on the so-called Hastert Highway issue until today: I took the old-school approach of letting a political luminary stepping off the stage have his or her day in the spotlight, at least for one day. I was not alone in that, either.

•If you're a Republican, odds are that you liked Hastert. With one caveat: if you're a conservative, you probably didn't like the high-spending, pork-laden budgets Hastert assented to as a way to get them through Congress. If you're a Democrat, odds are you disliked Hastert, but not with the vitriol you reserved for President Bush. Hastert carried Bush's water, true, but he wasn't the captain driving the ship.

•Hastert's loss of power represented a definite loss of clout for Illinois, and for the suburbs specifically. Illinois as a whole still has Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, who's No. 2 in his chamber's leadership, and Chicago has Democratic Rep. Rahm Emanuel.