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…