Madeleine Doubek is assistant metro editor/projects and politics at the Daily Herald, a suburban metro newspaper. She covered Hastert's election as speaker in Washington, D.C.

A VIEW FROM THE SUBURBS

U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert wants to be like Michel

by Madeleine Doubek

The oil portrait of longtime U.S. House Republican Leader Bob Michel of Peoria was prominently displayed in the House speaker's reception area long before U.S. Rep. J. Dennis Hastert of Yorkville took the post. It hangs in the hallway dedicated to the veteran gentleman from Illinois, who served nearly four decades but never made it to the speaker's chair. Now the portrait can serve to remind Hastert of the mentor he hopes to emulate.

"I hope, No. 1,I can be as good a person as Bob Michel is," Speaker Hastert said as he relaxed in his new office just after his swearing-in. "He's just genuinely a good man in my estimation and has a good rapport with people and just generally is open and straightforward and honest." Michel is "probably the best example of a politician I can think of because he really didn't wear his ego on his sleeve and has very great humility."

Hastert, a 57-year-old former high school government teacher and wrestling coach, tried to demonstrate his own average-guy humbleness the minute his sudden ascension was complete. He handed the speaker's gavel to rival House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri and walked down to the well of the House floor to deliver his first speech.

"My legislative home is here on the floor with you," the new speaker told his congressional colleagues, "and so is my heart."

'The basics are there,' Bob Michel says. 'He has the inclination to move the House in a constructive way.'

"This is not a job I sought," he added, "but it is one I embrace with determination and enthusiasm."

The gentleman from Yorkville is the first-ever speaker drafted for the job, something that was accomplished after Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana ended his bid amid revelations he had had extramarital affairs.

On that fateful impeachment Saturday, U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo, an Egan Republican, asked Hastert the critical question. "My face was about six inches from his and I said, 'You're the next speaker and can you withstand the scrutiny?'" Hastert said he could. "For times like this, the nation needs a common man," Manzullo recalled telling his congressional neighbor. "He said, 'I need to pray about this.' I said, 'You better pray quick.'"

Within hours, Hastert, a graduate of the Christian institution, Wheaton College, had the votes and what he suspects was the reluctant support of his wife, Jean, a schoolteacher who rarely participates in the Washington, D.C., social scene.

Hastert had been chief deputy whip, and he was chosen in part because he is one of very few in his party who is well liked by conservatives and liberals alike. His challenge is daunting. He must heal wounds within his own party, as well as within the Democratic caucus, in a House still reeling from the poison rhetoric of the historic impeachment. Further, the public holds in low regard the Republicans who drove the impeachment process. Hastert hopes President Bill Clinton, with an eye toward his own legacy, will want to join Hastert in pushing people-oriented legislation. "For your future and for ours, there needs to be some things we can get done together," he told Clinton.

Republicans hope a low-key Hastert style more like Michel's and former Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill's will help win back public faith. "If we didn't have him, we'd have to invent him," said Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas. Armey, who admitted he and fellow Texan Whip Tom DeLay couldn't have won support for the speaker's job because some Republicans don't trust either one, called Hastert "a unifier" who practices "gentle discipline."

"We needed a person to be speaker who could put aside differences and be a listener," said Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Ewing of Pontiac. "I think people are going to like him. They're going to like this guy next door."

He says he's no Newt Gingrich. "I don't have the intellectual aura or the ability to machine-gun ideas out at people," Hastert said. "I'm kind of measured. I've had some success in putting legislation together and getting it done and that's where my strengths are."

Former mentor Michel believes the time is right for a Speaker Hastert. "The basics are there," Michel says. "Denny has the personality. He has the inclination to move the House in a constructive way. He's not one to put a chip on his shoulder and say, 'Come get me.'" 

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