Saturday, December 21, 2002
The only thing surprising about Trent Lott's resignation as Senate majority leader Saturday was that it took as long as it did,
The fact that Lott at one time expected President Bush to come to his rescue is an indication that up until Friday, Lott did not truly see the error of his ways. Perhaps even now he doesn't.
After all, Lott, 61, had said virtually the same thing before without consequences. But before, he was a representative or a senator from Mississippi. This time, he was the majority leader-elect of the U.S. Senate.
At a Dec. 6 at a 100th birthday party for U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., Lott noted that Mississippi voted for Thurmond as president in 1948 and that Mississippians remain proud of that vote. Given that Thurmond had run as a Dixiecrat on a segregationist platform 54 years ago, that probably wasn't the smartest thing for Lott to say in 2002. But he went farther: "And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."
Those were the days
Ah, yes, if only the rest of the country had stood behind the Southern segregationists of the 1950s, what a marvelous country this would be. Negroes would still know their places. Pesky Northern agitators could be beaten in broad daylight or murdered under the cover of darkness. Fine young white men would not have to play football along side of or against black men.
There is nothing from the segregated South to get the slightest bit wistful about, and Trent Lott -- having lived through it -- should have known as much. That he didn't, made it clear that he was unfit to lead the Republican majority in a narrowly divided United States Senate.
It now appears that Lott will be replaced as leader by Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, a popular and respected senator, 10 years younger. That's not much of a gap in years, but there's a world of difference. Lott has acknowledged feeling resentment as he watched federal marshals integrate Ole Miss while he was a student there. Frist, while born in Nashville, has no such Old South memories from his student days in the early 1970s at Princeton and later at Harvard's med school.
Frist will be in a position to work in what his party and the Republican president see as the nation's best interest. Democrats will be free to work for or against that agenda.
Lott had become not a leader, but a distraction. The wisest thing he did this month was step down.