Dennis Hastert Is Dead. Apparently, So Are His Scandals [Op-Ed]

There must be something incredibly comforting about being a white man in America.

You can spend your life accumulating power, scandals, and victims, and then one day you die and suddenly everybody only remembers the good times.

Former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert died Saturday at 84. He was the longest-serving Republican speaker in American history, serving from 1999 to 2007. He was also a convicted felon who went to prison after federal prosecutors uncovered a scheme in which he paid more than $1.7 million in hush money to conceal his sexual abuse of teenage boys he coached decades earlier. Prosecutors said he abused at least four boys. The judge who sentenced him called him a “serial child molester.”

But he didn’t go to jail for serial molestations; he went to jail for financial crimes. And yet, somehow, death has a way of turning men like Hastert back into “former House speakers.”

That title is technically correct, of course. So is “Illinois Republican.” So is “longest-serving Republican speaker.”

But so is “man who sexually abused teenage boys.” So is “convicted felon.” So is “man who spent years paying one of his victims to keep quiet.” Those things should be the billboard of his miserable life, and instead they are footnotes.

Because that’s what happens when powerful people die. The political résumé gets polished up, and the old photographs come out. We see the smiling politician. The handshake. The Capitol. The family. And the ugly stuff gets pushed toward the back of the obituary, as if somebody spilled red wine on the family album and we’re all politely agreeing not to look at the stain.

This isn’t unique to Hastert. It is a familiar American ritual. It’s the whitewashing of Black hearts that happens whenever someone white dies or does something unspeakable, like the camping and jet skiing photos of the father who murdered his whole family. It’s the unbearable kindness given to white people despite their transgressions. It’s like whiteness comes with a built-in public relations department. It’s the reason we have juries that can still find the humanity in a woman who murdered all of her children.

America seems to have systemic empathy for white people both in life and in death. 

Hastert’s story is especially disturbing because his public image was built around the very institutions that should have made him trustworthy. He was a teacher and wrestling coach before becoming a powerful member of Congress and, eventually, Speaker of the House. He was called “Coach” by his colleagues. He presented himself as a regular Midwestern guy who somehow climbed to the top of American politics.

But the man behind that wholesome image was abusing boys who trusted him. And when the truth finally came out, he wasn’t prosecuted for the sexual abuse because the statute of limitations had expired. He was prosecuted for the financial scheme used to pay hush money to one of his victims. He served 13 months in federal prison.

Hastert didn’t merely have a scandal. He had a secret life that existed alongside his public one. He got to be Speaker of the House while carrying something horrific behind him.

And now he’s dead. Which means he can no longer defend himself, apologize, explain himself, or answer questions. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to forget.

Death should end a person’s life. It should not end the historical record. Hastert wasn’t a congress member who abused children; he was a sexual predator who happened to be a congressman. 

And maybe that is the real privilege here: not simply getting to live as a powerful white man, but getting to die as one. Because America has always been remarkably good at separating white men’s accomplishments from the people they harmed.

The problem is that when men like Hastert die, we tend to bury some of those truths with them. The victims don’t get that luxury. Their memories don’t get hospice care. Their childhoods don’t get an obituary. Their trauma doesn’t get rewritten as “a complicated legacy.”

Dennis Hastert is dead.

But the truth about Dennis Hastert isn’t.

And no amount of flowers, flags, old photographs, or respectful headlines should be allowed to change that.

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