UNITED STATES
New York Times
Frank Bruni
APRIL 30, 2016
FOR a lesson on the riddles of human nature, look no further than Dennis Hastert.
Go back to early 1999, when he became the speaker of the House of Representatives. Revisit the reason he got that job. His Republican colleagues were sick of provocateurs, had been burned by scandal and wanted a reprieve — an antidote, even. Hastert fit the bill. In their view he wasn’t merely above reproach. He was too frumpy and flat-out boring to be acquainted with reproach.
“Like an old shoe” was how one prominent Republican described him to a reporter at the time.
In the closet with that old shoe were skeletons, but no one around him knew it or could have guessed which kind. …
Hastert described himself as a born-again Christian and had a diploma from Wheaton College in Illinois, which advertises itself as “explicitly Christian” and is an alma mater of Billy Graham’s. This was a factor in his colleagues’ assessments of him as safe, uncontroversial. This was a drum still being beaten by authors of letters urging the judge to treat Hastert leniently.
Tom DeLay, who served as the House majority whip and then the House majority leader under Hastert, was one of those writers. He told the judge that he, Hastert and a pastor would routinely read and discuss the Bible together in lunchtime sessions on Capitol Hill.
“We held each other accountable and we studied God’s word,” wrote DeLay, later adding: “He is a good man that loves the Lord. He gets his integrity and values from Him. He doesn’t deserve what he is going through.”
Doesn’t deserve it because he prays in what DeLay, also a born-again Christian, considers the right way, to the right divinity? Perhaps that will earn Hastert the most important forgiveness of all. But it’s no free pass for bringing pain into the lives of children he was paid to instruct and inspire.
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