Don't Do Me Any Favors

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Why are these men smiling? Actually, only one of them is smiling. Denny Hastert, for the moment still Speaker of the House, is grimacing, and no wonder. According to a story from The AP, the President went to Chicago "offering a powerful boost in his moment of need" to Hastert. The New York Times said, "President Bush came to the home turf of the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, on Thursday to give him a resounding pledge of support."

Sheesh! Denny must be in even more trouble than I thought, if he needs a boost from a president whose popularity rises above 40 percent only on his good days.

Bush's appearance was at a fundraiser for a couple of Republican candidates for Congress; one of them, Peter Roskam, recently accused his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth, of wanting to "cut and run" in Iraq, a particularly infelicitous word choice as she lost both legs while serving as an Army pilot when her helicopter was shot down outside Baghdad. Perhaps I'm being to nice to Roskam; coming as he does from the party that criticized Max Clelland's patriotism (he's the now-former Senator from Georgia who lost three limbs in Vietnam), shameless would probably be a better word for his performance.

Bush's appearance at the fundraiser was ironic, for it brought together two of the leading figures in PageGate, a subject that Bush clearly wants to avoid. Joining Hastert and the President was Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), who's on the hotseat as the chair of the House Page Board--he's one of the Republican leaders who knew about Mark Foley's fondness for teenage boys and did nothing--or at least nothing effective--to stop it. And the appearance came on the same day that former Foley chief of staff Kirk Fordham was telling the House Ethics Committee that he did, indeed, warn Hastert's office about Foley many months earlier than the Speaker has admitted.

Here's a copy of the invitation to that fundraiser:

If all this has made you a little queasy, and you'd like to contribute to Tammy Duckworth's campaign, you can do so here. If' you'd like to contribute more generally, go to the Democratic congressional Campaign Committee or the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The Republicans may have run out of credibility, but not out of cash.