Former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert dead at 84

Dennis Hastert’s death at 84 brings back a strange mix of memories. For years he was the steady, unglamorous Speaker who kept House Republicans together through the Clinton impeachment and the post-9/11 wars. Then came the news that broke everything about his reputation. It’s hard to write a neat obituary for a man who did real public service and then pleaded guilty to dodging bank rules in a scheme to hide his own misconduct. One scandal doesn't erase a career. But it also doesn't get a pass just because he wore the Speaker's robe.

What struck us about the coverage is how quickly Hastert becomes a cautionary tale about power. That's fair, so far as it goes. But the deeper lesson is quieter: he got away with it for decades because too many people looked the other way. The institutional Republican Party he led valued order and seniority, and he used that machinery to keep secrets. The system protected him until it couldn't. That isn't a partisan failure. It's a human one, and it ought to make every institution take a hard look at how it handles whispers about powerful men.

At the same time, we can't pretend his story is the whole story of his career. The man who grew up in small-town Illinois and coached wrestling, who worked his way up through state politics to the second most important job in Washington, did help pass welfare reform and tax cuts. He was a skilled tactician, and Republicans today could use some of that plainspoken grit. But the end of his life will always be defined by the boys he abused and the hush money that tried to hide it. Some legacies don't get a second act. We'll let history sort the rest.