Bob Livingston Regrets Letting Dennis Hastert Take the House Gavel

Twenty years after Rep. Bob Livingston, R.-La., stunned his colleagues by becoming the first speaker-designate of the House to decline the speakership, the former congressman now reveals his biggest regret was to permit fellow Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., to take the gavel and go on to be the longest-serving Republican speaker in history.

"He was far happier on his farm in Illinois than he was as speaker and he should have recognized that and gone home after his first two years on the job," writes Livingston his a just-released, no-punches-pulled memoir, "The Windmill Chaser."

For the dilemmas that House Republicans would face over the next two decades, Livingston blames Hastert and what he calls the "sycophants and arrogant staffers" with which the speaker surrounded himself. The dilemma of government spending run rampant that was ignited under the presidency of George W. Bush, was in large part the fault of Speaker Hastert's "go along" philosophy, Livingston argues.

Livingston revisits events of 1998 which are vividly recalled by Capitol Hill correspondents and lawmakers who were serving in the House at the time. With House Speaker Newt Gingrich announcing his resignation following poor GOP showings in the midterm elections, popular Appropriations Committee Chairman Livingston quickly wrapped up the support of fellow Republicans to succeed him.

Then, on December 19, Speaker-designate Livingston announced he wasn't going to run for speaker after all and would resign from Congress. Penthouse publisher Larry Flynt had offered major dollars to women who would confess affairs with Members of Congress and Livingston was now facing such a revelation. Although the relationship had occurred many years before and his marriage survived, Livingston did not want to put his wife and children through a public rehashing of the events.

The next step was to find another Republican to be speaker and, after consultation with then-House Republican Whip Tom DeLay of Texas, Livingston agreed upon DeLay's Chief Deputy Whip Hastert.

"He was a disaster," Livingston now believes, "He avoided public appearances like the plague. He couldn't give a sensible speech. He had no discernible philosophy and his staff was primarily parochial and limited."

Hastert, Livingston writes, "squandered the trust we handed him. He took a party and a country that were in good fiscal condition, permitted earmarks and Congressional spending to go wild, ran up an intolerable deficit, and set the stage for the destruction of the Republican majority [in the House]."

Hastert, of course, left the speakership, was found guilty of bank violations, and lying to an FBI agent. It also became evident Hastert had dark secrets of his own, and had tried to withdraw $3.5 million from his bank account to pay off a blackmailer he had subjected to sexual abuse while a high school coach. He was later sentenced to 15 months in prison.

There is, of course, much more than the Hastert saga to "The Windmill Chaser"—a reference to Livingston's life of pursuing goals that seemed (for someone like him) and somehow achieving most of them.

The product of a broken home (his father moved to Spain "to avoid paying alimony to my mother [and] literally drunk himself to death"), Livingston freely admits he was a mediocre student and "an eternal klutz." His studies at Tulane University were interrupted by a stint in the U.S. Navy, where he primarily typed forms ("twelve words a minute"). He finally earned a bachelor and law degree because of Tulane's unique "3x3" program permitting law classes to count as the number of elective courses he needed for an undergraduate degree.

Livingston was truly an everyman in his early professional life. Bored by civil law (he often slept at his desk between cases), he finally found his calling as trying criminal cases as an assistant U.S. Attorney. He later was prosecutor under New Orleans' legendary District Attorney Harry Connick.

Defeated for Congress in 1976, Livingston roared back the following year to win a special election after the Democrat who defeated him was forced out for encouraging multiple voting by individuals on his behalf.

Much as the late Frank Gifford gave a blunt view of pro football in his memoir "The Whole Nine Yards," Livingston offers a straightforward, warts-and-all look at the Congress he served in from 1977-98. A solid, good-as-Goldwater conservative, the Louisianan nevertheless cherished the compromise and camaraderie he found in the U.S. House of the 1970's.

"Serving under Democratic Harold 'Biz' Johnson of California and Ray Roberts of Texas," Livingston recalls of his service on the House Public Works Committee. "Those days taught me the value of compromise, a concept envisioned in our Constitution, but fairly unknown as Congress progressed under the Bush [43] and Obama Administrations of the early 2000s. Without compromise, nothing is accomplished . . ."

Livingston rose through the ranks of the House and leapfrogged over four senior Republicans to chair the Appropriations Committee after the GOP captured the House in 1994. He recounts that period and some of the larger-than-life political players he dealt with—from onetime NFL quarterback and New York Rep. Jack Kemp, whom he considers a mentor, to fellow Tulane University graduate Newt Gingrich, an ally who nonetheless frustrated Livingston and other allies with his strategy in the 1998 elections focusing on President Bill Clinton rather than the House GOP's own accomplishments. It cost him the speakership.

Livingston is as direct and plain-spoken about political allies as he is about himself. "The Windmill Chaser" is not only an extraordinary assessment by a key political figure in the modern Republican Party but a provocative and comprehensive review of what is the turbulent politics of our time.

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.