Politics: Vacant Lott - Trent Lott

Sen. Thurmond turned 100 on December 5, when Sen. Lott said, "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we [Mississippians] voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." Lott's full retraction and apology did not come until a press conference on December 13. In the intervening eight days, Lott made apologies that were wimpy and clueless (including the classic formulation of the moral shoulder-shrugger -- "I apologize to anyone who was offended by my statement" -- in other words, I'm not offensive, but if you're touchy, I'm sorry). Eight days may not seem long, but in a news cycle driven by the instantaneous blogosphere, they are an eternity. Lott's lead-footed clumsiness unfits him to be the GOP choice for Senate majority leader.

Not that he was ever well-suited for the job. After the 1998 elections, in which the GOP lost ground, NR called Lott "better suited to the back bench," and urged Oklahoma senator Don Nickles to challenge him. Lott's main principles seem to be pork-barreling and institutional bonhomie (one of his defenders has been GOP renegade Jim Jeffords, who sang with Lott in a senatorial barbershop quartet). Whatever conservative principles he had related to race -- opposition to race preferences, for instance -- and whatever loyalty he felt to his colleagues have been tossed overboard in a grovel-fest during which he has implicitly suggested that the rest of the GOP needs a racial readjustment just like his. First he didn't apologize at all; now he apologizes for the wrong things.

Many of Lott's critics are motivated by opportunism. Democrats want a salve for their historic losses in November. They hope to use the Lott controversy to establish the premises for future victories: Their tally of his sins includes opposition to affirmative action, extension of the voting-rights act, and Martin Luther King Day -- positions that can be justified by principle, federalism, or fiscal prudence. In reaming Lott, Democrats hold him to a different standard than they hold their own. George McGovern campaigned for another of the presidential candidates in 1948, FDR's former vice president Henry Wallace, whose candidacy was managed by Stalinists -- not that Sen. McGovern or his party ever acknowledged that moral failure.

Is Sen. Lott a racist? Today, no; yesterday, by the standards of the time, yes. But this question, with its whiff of thought control, misses the point. If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? We must not require public leaders to have spotless pasts, or spotless thoughts. We do require them to understand the gravity of recent history, to act accordingly, and when they act amiss, to know it without having the screws put to them.

The Dixiecrats of 1948 espoused some principles which, in the abstract, are laudable: support for small government, concern for states' rights. But their campaign occurred, not in the abstract, but in resistance to a nascent effort to change Southern institutions that reduced half the population to peonage. It should be possible to wish a centenarian happy birthday without embracing this dark episode. Republicans have a historic opportunity in Congress, even as the nation faces a historic challenge abroad. The GOP's majority in the Senate should be led by a better, less burdened man.

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