Editorial: House leadership fails

Saturday, Dec. 16, 2006 | 7:03 a.m.

The outcome of the recent House ethics committee's investigation of former Republican Rep. Mark Foley's lewd messages to teenage House pages is sad, but not surprising. The committee found Republican leaders were negligent in their handling of the case, but the committee cleared them, saying no one broke any House rules.

Congress plays by its own set of rules. Once Foley resigned and was out from under congressional authority, the ethics committee found no one left who had clearly violated House rules.

Hopefully the lack of punishment won't lessen the impact of what the bipartisan ethics committee found - a glaring lack of leadership at all levels. The committee found that while people in both parties knew that Foley was sending suggestive e-mails to pages, no one took appropriate action to stop him. Committee investigators observed "a disconcerting unwillingness to take responsibility" from those they interviewed.

The committee's report notes that "political considerations played a role in decisions that were made by persons in both parties" and singles out Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert, who made a public statement after the story broke, denying knowledge of the e-mails. The committee said such a statement, coming from the House's highest officer, could have affected the investigation. The committee reasoned that the statement could have hindered its ability to "secure evidence from witnesses," saying that Hastert's statement could have led to witnesses making "efforts to compare and contrast recollections" before they testified. In other words, it could have created a party line for witnesses to follow.

In a 1983 investigation into a scandal involving two congressmen having sex with pages, the ethics committee noted, "The House has always regarded pages as its wards and has always accepted a special responsibility to them."

That certainly didn't happen then, and in this case involving Foley more than two decades later, the House again failed to protect the pages.

Obviously, in an election year, this was a political football, but it shouldn't have been. It should have been about protecting teenagers from a predator.