Accountability in the House --WaPo Editorial

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/03/AR2006100301322.html?referrer=email


Accountability in the House
In the Foley scandal, Republican leaders are still ducking.

Wednesday, October 4, 2006; A24



THE HOUSE must name a trustworthy outside investigator to examine the conduct of its leaders and officials in the matter of former representative Mark Foley (R-Fla.). The sooner Republican leaders recognize that this is the only responsible -- not to mention politically acceptable -- approach to the scandal, the better off they, and the country, will be. So far, though, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and his finger-pointing colleagues have been resolutely resisting this obvious move.

First they called for the notoriously somnolent and dysfunctional House ethics committee to look into the matter. Then they sought to enlist the Justice Department. "This investigation should be thorough, and any violation of the law should be prosecuted," President Bush chimed in yesterday. Fine, but a criminal investigation can deal only with violations of criminal law. The indifferent response of House leaders to Mr. Foley's behavior may be criminal in a moral sense but not, most likely, in a legal one.

Other proposals smell more of a desperate desire to take action than of a considered response. Abolishing the page program doesn't seem advisable, and in any event it would not obviate the need for a reliable investigation. Nor would Mr. Hastert's resignation, particularly if the primary motivation is to have someone take the fall.

Instead, the speaker should instruct the ethics panel to appoint, with bipartisan agreement, an outside investigator to handle the matter -- a former federal judge or a figure with similar independent credibility. This person would need the power to compel testimony and subpoena records. In the interim, the speaker and other members of the leadership -- if they wish to retain any moral claim to remaining House leaders -- must provide a more detailed explanation of their conduct. Mr. Hastert's conflicting statements about whether he was informed about Mr. Foley's "overly friendly" e-mails, and his stated failure to remember any warning about the lawmaker's conduct, are neither convincing nor reassuring. If a colleague told you about such a problem with someone in your office, would you forget it? "I know that he wants all the facts to come out," the president said of Mr. Hastert. Not based on the evidence so far.

The irony here is that, were it not for their reflexive instinct for one-party governance, the Republicans could have spared themselves this scandal, or at least ensured that it was a bipartisan one. But their initial response to reports of a potential problem was to keep it inside the family -- not to inform, for example, the Democratic member responsible for overseeing the page program, Rep. Dale E. Kildee (Mich.). And it's telling that Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) took the problem to the head of the GOP's campaign arm, Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (N.Y.), whose role is to get Republicans reelected. Was that the priority all along?