Yip Yap Times

Should Hastert Resign Over Foley's Foibles?

HASTERT SAYS HE WON'T STEP ASIDE OVER FOLEY SCANDAL
House Speaker Dennis Hastert on Thursday said that he has "done nothing wrong" and that he will not step down over the controversy surrounding former Rep. Mark Foley. read more
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When I was still with the State Department, a former supervisor, who was also a reserve colonel in the Air Force, told me that in the military the superior officer was responsible for the actions of his subordinate—I assumed this meant while on the job. He applied this same management philosophy to the civilian workplace but with the added restriction that the so-called team leader had no authority to force the team members, i.e. subordinates, to do anything.

“But what about insubordination?” I asked. “The team leader can give well thought out directions that anticipate everything that can go wrong and the subordinate can still choose to disregard them. The only way to prevent this is for the supervisor to stand watch over the subordinate every second to make sure the job gets done right. In that case it’s better to spell team with an I.” The superior officer should not and cannot be held responsible for every action of the subordinate, but only for how his decisions affect the performance of the subordinate. And that should be judged based on the information that was available to the superior at the time. Anything beyond that would be unjust.

That said, how much responsibility does the Speaker of the House actually assume when members behave badly? The Speaker of the House has several roles: the institutional role of presiding officer and administrative head of the House, the partisan leader of the majority party in the House and the representative role of an elected Member of the House. The Constitution does not describe the office of the Speaker or his duties, nor was there any significant discussion of the office during the Constitutional Convention. But the apparent perception is that the Speaker does have authority over members. For example, State Senator Tom Kean Jr., New Jersey Republican, who is running for the Senate, called yesterday for Mr. Hastert to resign the speakership, saying, "He is the head of that institution, and this happened on his watch…”

Legally, it doesn’t look like the Speaker has the power to unilaterally remove a congressman from office, even someone like the erstwhile congressman Foley. What the Speaker can do is unleash the House Ethics Committee to investigate members who have broken the rules that regulate the behavior that is considered ethical for members. Depending on its findings, the Committee can then issue certain disciplinary actions like censure or expulsion. Criminal investigations may or not happen at the request of the Speaker or the Committee.

Hastert and members of the Congressional Page Program did confront Foley and if he had obeyed the Speaker’s orders to stop contact with the pages none of this mess would be happening now. But since Foley continued unrepentent and surreptitiously, holding Hastert directly responsible for the activities of this middle-aged man is unjust. The Democrats counter by insisting that Foley’s activities “were an open secret in Congress.” If this is true, why weren't the Democrats bellowing about sexual predators then? Ms. Pelosi’s yip-yapping about the Republican Party’s failure to “protect our children” should be understood for what it is: opportunistic and disingenuous. After all, if Hastert goes, Ms. Pelosi has a chance to grab his seat, no pun intended. If Hastert is responsible, then the entire Congress is responsible.

Seeking to escape their responsibility for this problem, the Democrats have been pushing the idea that Hastert did know about the iffy contact between Foley and the pages well before the 2005 episode. According to a Washington Post report: “House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s chief of staff confronted then-Rep. Mark Foley about his inappropriate social contact with male pages well before the speaker said aides in his office took any action, a current congressional staff member with personal knowledge of Foley and his behavior with pages said yesterday.” But until it’s proven, neither Hastert nor anyone else should step down.

Foley’s folly might have brought the smack down on Hastert's career and is likely to be terribly damaging to the election chances of senior and aspiring Republican campaigns. The poll taken by FoxNews suggests "Americans have bailed on the speaker." The Republican Party must show the voters that "something is being done," hence the vociferous demands of the both the left and the right for resignations. This is only a knee-jerk attempt to scrub the tarnish from the gleaming perception of the Party as the guardian of morals and family values. That “something” doesn’t have to be effective or even reasonable, just as long as it looks like someone is falling on his proverbial sword. But this is not due process and this tactic will fail because it just makes the whole Party look guilty. If Hastert bows to these pressures, the Democrats will be motivated to continue to search for more and more Republicans who “knew and did nothing” until they reach the logical extreme of every Republican having resigned his seat. And that would be ridiculous.

“How the mighty have fallen.” What was Foley thinking? Was the six-term winner bewitched by his own success and so enamored of his power that he figured any boy would feel privileged for his attentions, no matter how gross or illegal? Who else in Congress is self-deluded into believing he is above such petty things as ethics or the law? Congress has been “ex-Foley-ated” as one clever blogger put it, and hopefully this is a lesson to any elected would-be criminals.

posted by Lisa @ 6:33 AM