Even with a staff shakeup, the Bush White House still does not get it when dealing with House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

Hastert went public in criticizing President Bush’s nomination of Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden to be the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Speaker, who was close to ousted CIA chief Porter Goss, a former House member, is of the opinion that a military man should not lead the CIA. But that’s a message Hastert could have communicated through back channels and not make public.

But he did. Why? Because he was not consulted before Hayden’s name was announced.

Yes, it’s true that the Senate, not the House, votes to confirm Hayden. That’s not the point. From the Hastert perspective, he is the No. 3 leader of the land and gets a weekly intel briefing.

So even if Bush wanted to pick Hayden over Hastert’s objection, the Speaker would have kept his opinion to himself — if  he had been part of the process.

• Dole call. Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-S.C), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, keeps the lowest profile of the four congressional campaign committee chiefs.

It’s hard for the steel magnolia to ace the warrior bosses of the other congressional campaign committees, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Reps. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.).

But perhaps a change is on the way. Tomorrow, Dole debuts at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast session with reporters. Schumer was a guest a few weeks ago and talked mostly about his trip to China and Chinese-U.S. relations.

• The Kennedy genes. Christopher Kennedy is a first cousin to Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), and one of Robert Kennedy’s sons. He runs the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. After Rep. Kennedy sent himself into rehab again at Mayo Clinic after crashing a car in the Capitol grounds last week, I asked his cousin about his situation.

Said Christopher Kennedy: “The Kennedys have very strong genes, some good, some bad. … There is a genetic element to all this. But his good genes are stronger than his bad genes, and he will rebound.”

• House workweek. Robert V. Remini, the University of Illinois at Chicago historian and author of the just-published The House: The History of the House of Representatives, relates in his book how the House workweek has been reduced to, most of the time, Tuesday through Thursday and pinpoints the development back to the Newt Gingrich era.

I asked House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) if House members ought to be in Washington more.

“I do think that we need to have a serious conversation about how best to do our job. There have been proposals out there of two weeks on — two weeks here in Washington, two weeks out in your district. Some suggest three weeks here, one week back in your district. There are a lot of possibilities,” Boehner said.

An update on Boehner’s political travels: May 5, headlined the Republican National Committee state chairmen’s meeting, Colorado Springs, Colo.; May 6, in Littleton for Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.); and May 8, in Topeka, Kan., for Rep. Jim Ryun (R-Kan.).

Sweet is the Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it