Hastert on Hastert: “What You See Is What You Get”

In 2003, novelist Jonathan Franzen explored the back story of the now-scandal-struck ex-House speaker.

Seth Perlman/AP

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In 2003, The New Yorker dispatched acclaimed novelist Jonathan Franzen to write a mega-profile of Denny Hastert, who four years earlier had improbably become House speaker following Newt Gingrich’s implosion during the Clinton impeachment scandal. (During the Clinton mess, Hastert was an advocate of impeachment, at one point castigating the president for his “inability to abide by the law.”) With the developing news that Hastert has been indicted for allegedly violating banking laws while paying $3.5 million in hush money, apparently to conceal sexual abuse involving a male student at an Illinois high school where Hastert once taught and coached wrestling, Franzen’s lengthy take serves up useful insights (and what now appear to be a few wrong notes) about a man who was often described as a rather forgettable politician.

Below are several snippets (subscribers to the magazine can find the full article here):

  • “Hastert’s public persona, to the extent that he has one, is the Coach.”
  • “When I asked him if he had gay friends, he replied that he has friends who are single. ‘They’re really good people,’ he said. ‘And I’ve never asked.’ Does he care? ‘If I cared,’ he said, ‘I’d probably ask.’ (He is uncomfortable with Senator Frist’s advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. ‘I think the courts should decide that,’ he said.)”
  • “‘With me, what you see is what you get,’ Hastert told me the first time we met, in June. ‘There’s not a lot of nuances here.'”
  • “Later in the speech, [Hastert] describes the Speaker’s office in the Capitol. ‘It has a great big chandelier in it,’ he says. ‘Yeah-oh, I was a high-school wrestling coach. I never thought I’d have an office with a chandelier.
  • “As a coach in Yorkville [Illinois], Hastert was famously impassive during matches. While opposing coaches paced at the edge of the mats and shouted at their wrestlers (‘Stand up!’ ‘Grab the wrist!’ ‘Head up!’), he sat silently, with his arms crossed over a clipboard.”
  • “For Hastert, though power seems always to have been more about service than about the advancement of his own ends or vision. He became a born-again Christian in high school, and much of his time at Wheaton College, an evangelical institution, was devoted to religious study… [H]e comes from a religious college that provided instruction in service and submission, rather than in partying and doubt.”
  • “What you see there—a Speaker who delivers the Republican goods—really is what you get. It doesn’t matter, in the public realm, what kind of person Hastert is. It matters only privately that, to do the brutal work in Washington, he requires psychic ballast back in Illinois.”

Franzen wasn’t the only one who promoted the Coach Hastert theme. When Hastert wrote his own autobiography 10 years later, he titled it, Speaker: Lessons from Forty Years in Coaching and Politics.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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