WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- The choice of a new congressional chaplain typically does not generate political heat nor light. Since 2000, when George W. Bush was elected president by the margin of five electoral votes, the times in Washington have been decidedly atypical of the modern era and have been politically supercharged to boot.
It is in this context that Illinois Republican J. Dennis Hastert was introduced into big-league U.S. politics.
Outside Washington, the former state legislator and high school wrestling coach was not exactly a household name when he became speaker in January 1999. A low-key Midwesterner with an affinity for fellow Illinois Republican Abraham Lincoln, Hastert -- like the president who now occupies the White House -- is results rather than process oriented. For those who follow the inner workings of Congress, how he handled the firestorm over the selection of the new chaplain is, aside from being his political baptism by fire, an instructive lesson in how he operates because, as GOP pollster David Winston said, "Hastert knows how to win."
Normally, no one would have raised an eyebrow when Hastert chose -- from a list of three finalists sent to him by an 18-member bipartisan committee of House members who vetted the candidates -- a Presbyterian minister to be the House's new chaplain. The fact a Roman Catholic priest had also been on the list of finalists gave some Democrats an opening to try and score political points -- an opening they marched through when they accused Hastert of caving to anti-Catholic sentiments on the so-called religious right. The Rev. Timothy O'Brien, the passed-over priest, Slate magazine wrote in March 2000, "immediately accused Republicans of anti-Catholic bias."
The charge echoed while Democrats alluded to an anti-Catholic bias on the part of the GOP that harkened back to the inflammatory "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion" slur a protestant minister and supporter of Republican James G. Blaine uttered in 1884, sinking Blaine's best chance of winning the White House.
The debate went on for months, distracting from the business of the House and, slowly, giving the Republicans an opportunity to dig themselves a deeper and deeper a hole from which there was no clear means of escape -- until Hastert stepped forward and took charge.
Rather than convene a search for new candidates or cave to the pressure and name O'Brien, Hastert did what some might consider unexpected and others would say gave meaning to the word "leadership." After consulting with Chicago's Cardinal Francis George, Hastert scrapped the committee's work all together and named, as he is empowered as speaker to do, a candidate of his own choosing: the Rev. Daniel Coughlin, who prior to his appointment had been the vicar for priests in the archdiocese of Chicago.
More to the point, Hastert denounced his colleagues' behavior as shameful. "My friends, in all of my years in this Congress, I have never seen a more cynical and more destructive political campaign," Hastert said from the well of the House. "That such a campaign should be waged in connection with the selection of a House chaplain brings shame on this House."
Few -- on either side of the aisle -- have chosen to tangle with him in such an overtly partisan way ever since, preferring instead to aim their barbs at House Republican Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.
Having come up through the ranks in the rough-and-tumble environment of the Illinois Legislature, Hastert understands that power is best exercised when it is not exercised at all.
A collegial man who values team building, Hastert has an ambitious agenda for the next two years, as long as his GOP colleagues in the Senate and at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue -- who do not operate on the same two-year political cycle as the House -- march alongside him.
Winston's perspective on Hastert is valuable, not just because of his acute ability to analyze survey data but because, as a former top aide to Newt Gingrich and GOP Conference Chairman J.C. Watts, he has a thorough understanding of the way in which the House leadership operates.
"Hastert's style is much more that of a coach," Winston said. "He assigns responsibility and helps people out when he can, but ultimately they live or die on their own skill, merit and ability." He believes Hastert brought the style of leadership he learned as a coach into the speaker's role, much to the good.
But that success also comes as the result of quickly acquired political acumen born of the need to survive and succeed in the rough-and-tumble world of the U.S. House.
"In the minds of a lot of the members," Winston said, "Hastert has been able to solidify the GOP's hold on its majority," an assertion the numbers confirm. "The majority seemed pretty precarious when he took over in 1999; now, it is pretty solid. That kind of political accomplishment engenders the respect of his colleagues -- on both sides of the aisle. Consequently, it gives a lot more weight to the positions he takes and the markers he chooses to set down."
Those markers are likely to be much more in evidence in the next two years than in the last. Like most politicians who were in Washington in the early 1990s, Hastert and his staff remember the politically disastrous consequences visited upon House Democrats after they agreed, following considerable arm-twisting, to vote in favor of a Clinton White House plan to hike taxes on energy -- specifically on British thermal units. The proposal, as unpopular as it was controversial, was dropped from the Senate bill and was not part of the final Clinton tax hike. The change came too late for Democrats in the House, however, some of whom were left twisting in the wind because of their votes for the Clinton Btu tax. The GOP leaders who control the House, including Hastert, are determined not to allow themselves to be drawn into the same trap.
The cautious approach is, observers of the legislative process say, a valid one. President Bush is talking up an ambitious agenda for his second term, including Social Security reform legislation that includes the creation of private accounts as well as fundamental tax reform. There is also the continuing matter of the war on terror and the aftermath of the Iraq war to consider, anyone of which could, if mishandled, give Democrats the opening they need to win back control of the House for the first time since 1992.
Hastert's agenda for the next four years -- he has, sources on Capitol Hill say, committed to serve alongside the president for the entirety of the second term -- begins with the recognition of the need to make the nation safer.
In his closing speech to the 108th Congress, Hastert allowed that much of their work had "been dominated by concerns about security."
"Our constituents are worried about their personal security. That is not surprising, given the war on terror," he said on the House floor after the November election. "But they are also concerned about economic security. They are worried about jobs, about healthcare for their families, about making this world a better place for their children and grandchildren."
To that end, Hastert seems in sync with the White House on the need to move forward on efforts to change the Social Security system, reform the tax code and pass medical liability reform, the same issues the president has said are his immediate priorities for the second term. Added to that are the need to pass a comprehensive energy plan that will reduce U.S. dependence on foreign energy sources, the highway bill and, as Hastert himself said on Nov. 20, a still-developing fiscal crisis.
"Our national debt is too high and our budget deficit is too big. We need to cut spending first. We need to look closely at entitlement spending. ... And we can get to a balanced budget again," Hastert said. "But as we look at reforming government and cutting deficits," he cautioned, "we should resist calls to raise taxes."
Hastert believes that growing the U.S. economy is the best way to close the deficit while hiking tax rates will stifle U.S. productivity. The numbers are on his side here as well, with gross domestic product growing at a more than acceptable 3.9-percent clip and with the United States having created more jobs than the other members of the G8 combined since the summer of 2003.
Hastert's political success is likewise impressive, especially in light of the fact that many Americans still do not know who he is. For decades the speaker of the U.S. House was, for good or for bad, a towering figure in U.S. politics. From the clubby, shrewd Sam Rayburn to the affable liberal Tip O'Neill to the brilliant but mercurial Gingrich, the post -- while producing only one U.S. president in 225 years -- is the second- or third-most important in the federal government.
Though overused, the "workhorse, not a show horse" applies to Hastert, who is the first Republican speaker in a century and one of only two in U.S. history to have the GOP win House seats in consecutive elections and is one of only six -- and only the second Republican -- to wield the gavel for four consecutive sessions of the House of Representatives.
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