(Il-House). House Speaker Denny's Hastert's troubles over the Congressional Page scandal are bad enough on its own merits to warrant Hastert stepping down immediately, IMO. But if others need further convincing, as apparantly they do, it may be helpful to hark back to the record of earlier speakers, to provide some more perspective.
The references I cite here come from the marvelous book Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century, by John A. Farrell.
Stick with me below the jump for a few passages that seem worthy of mention, in light of Hastert's handling of the Congressional Page sex scandal, and Hastert's efforts to retain power:
First, it's worth noting that when Tip O'Neill was House Speaker, he brought to the job qualities that were admired by all:
There is a unananimity of belief that we have a speaker who is dignified without being pompous, a presiding officer who is firm without being tyrranical ... a leader who is a great Democrat, but who shuns the wiles of the demagogue-- Massachussets politican and friend Paul Deaver p. 117
O'Neill had to endure struggles with biases in the award of FCC licences to TV stations. In particular, there was a 10 year fight over the award of a TV licence to the Boston Herald's then owner, which showed the extent of licences being denied to democratic leaning owners, and favoratism to republican-leaning owners (p. 158-160). This investigation, by professor Bernard Schwartz, was by the way a contributor to the rise of the journalistic career of a young Ben Bradlee, of the Washington Post.
Tip O'Neill received some lessons from the Vietnam experience personall, in 1964, well before the height of the conflict, from Generals Maxwell Taylor and Westmoreland:
The successive political uphevals and the accompanying turmoil which have followed (SVN's President) Diem's demise upset all prior US calculations. We now know what are the basic factors responsible for this turmoil--chronic factionalism, civilian-military suspicions and distrust, absence of national spirit and motivation, lack of cohesion in the social structure, and lack of experience in the conduct of government (p. 210)
As questioning about the war in SVN continued, O'Neill consulted further with a card-playing buddy, who happened to be the then retired commandant of the US Marine Corps, David Shoup. Shoup said:
We're sending our boys over there on a mission we're not out to win..." (p.219)
Nevertheless, the war momentum continued. A snapshot of the times, as the 1966 DRAFT came to 367,000:
As 1967 began, there were 375,000 Americans in VietNam. The US had flown 105,000 combat sorties, dropping 200,000 tons of bombs. Yet the Communists actively increased the size of their forces in the South by another 100,000 soldiers, more than compensating for the 60,000 casualties in that year. By mid-1967, the number of Americans killed had exceeded 10,000 (p223)
O'Neill received a back-channel briefing from high ranking members of the CIA, who resorted to this strategem as a way to try and get the intelligence information to the President, as the agency analysts feared that their intelligence was NOT GETTING TO THE PRESIDENT, but being blocked at lower levels. Nevertheless,
40,000 more American lives were yet to be spent on a war that the nation's intelligence community had concluded was unwinable. (p. 228)
I hope that I have made the point that even a Speaker of the House friendly to the President faces some difficulty in bringing the best efforts of the government to the boss's desk, even if it's certain that the President won't like what he hears. And I hope it highlights how dangerous it is to keep a Speaker in power who is committed to keeping the President isolated from news the President needs to hear. IMO, Hastert is part of the problem of secrecy, cover-up, and thus bad government. There are stunning parallels to Vietnam, for those who care to look upon history for its lessons.