YORKVILLE, Ill. – Rep. Dennis Hastert became speaker of the House by a twist of fate, and ended up holding the post longer than any other Republican during a tumultuous period of American history.

On Friday, Hastert, 65, made official what has been suspected since he lost the powerful speaker’s post after Republicans lost control of the House in last year’s elections: He will not seek another term in Congress.

“Together, we have made a difference. We have made history, and I thank you,” he told supporters in front of the Kendall County courthouse in the northern Illinois district he was first elected to represent in 1986.

He was certainly part of history. A former wrestling coach and history teacher, Hastert, like everyone else, expected former Rep. Bob Livingston to become speaker when Newt Gingrich stepped aside.

But when Livingston abruptly announced he would retire following disclosure of marital infidelity, Hastert became speaker. It was a post he would hold from 1999 to 2007 – longer than any other Republican in American history. Democrat Sam Rayburn of Texas held the post for a record 17 years.

Hastert’s tenure included some of the most uncertain times in recent American history – a period in which Hastert’s ascent to the White House was a real possibility.

In the unsettling weeks after the 2000 presidential election, before the Supreme Court settled the issue and George Bush became president, Hastert quietly underwent preparations for becoming temporary president.

His intelligence briefings were intensified, he said, and Secret Service officials came to his office with plans detailing how he would be sworn in as fill-in commander in chief.

“I had just gotten used to being speaker,” Hastert – who would have had to resign from Congress if he became temporary president – said in a recent interview in his Capitol office.

Hastert remained speaker, of course, and he was speaker on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked commercial jets and crashed them into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon. From his Capitol office, Hastert could see smoke rolling across the National Mall from the Pentagon.

Post-attack legislation necessary to help airlines begin flying again, as well as other similar bills, were hashed out in meetings in his second-floor office of the Capitol.

“I really took the lead in most of that, and it was an extraordinary time of bipartisanship,” he said.

As point man for Bush’s legislative program, he patrolled the House floor while a roll call vote was held open all night until Republicans had the votes to pass the administration’s landmark Medicare bill.

Hastert worked with Bush on other issues, including tax reform. Sometimes, his job meant telling the president news he may not have wanted to hear.

After Bush was re-elected, for example, “I said to the president early on that his whole Social Security reform thing, we probably couldn’t get it through Congress,” he recalled.

Bush’s advisers, though, disagreed, telling the president he could push it through Congress – which prompted Hastert to tell the president again that he probably couldn’t get that done.

A few years later, the subject was Bush’s request for legislation that included a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. And again Hastert’s message to the president was that it wasn’t going to pass.

“I could tell where our members were … and where our votes were,” he said. “I remember finally telling him, I think I had a meeting before the White House picnic last year, I said, ‘Mr. President, this isn’t going to happen.'”

It didn’t.

Hastert had his own troubles. Before last year’s election, he and other Republican leaders came under fire for the way they reacted to the news that former Rep. Mark Foley was sending sexually explicit computer messages to teenage congressional pages. Hastert said he did not learn of Foley’s messages until late September 2006, nevertheless became a symbol of the burgeoning scandal and what some considered House leaders’ failure to respond to the revelations about Foley.

Hastert, a popular headliner at GOP campaign events prior the episode, severely limited his public appearances in the weeks leading up to the election.

Yet the fact that Hastert stuck it out in Congress after Republicans became the minority party after years of control is typical of the former coach, constituent Patricia Norr said Friday.

“That’s his integrity,” said Norr, of Montgomery. “He was never one to give up.”

Hastert’s retirement raises a host of questions about what might happen in the district in which he has easily been re-elected for years. On Friday, he would not say whether he will serve out his term or leave before it ends in January 2009.

“I’m going to serve as long as I feel I can be effective in the Congress,” he told reporters after his speech.

The other question is what might happen to when he does finally leave office.

The district has long been a Republican stronghold, with Hastert repeatedly easily winning re-election. In 2004, President Bush received 55 percent of the district’s vote.

But now, local Democrats are starting to boast that they can win another congressional seat. The GOP vows that it won’t easily give up the seat it’s held for two decades, but at the least it seems certain the Republicans will have to fight for the seat in a way they haven’t had to for years.

As for Hastert, in the recent interview in Washington, he said he hasn’t made up his mind what is next.

“I’ve got to try and decide what to do with the rest of my life,” he said.