| A Racist in the Woodpile |
January 2002
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Lott Quits, Not Soon Enough
There was a saying in Washington a few years ago that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, the thing in question is a duck. If a Senator talks like a bigot and votes like a bigot, then perhaps the GOP is better off without Trent Lott from Mississippi as its majority leader. The question is, what took him so long to resign?
American politicians are unfortunately bad at quitting when the time has come. The problem is a cultural one -- ministers in Europe and elsewhere resign over matters of policy and conscience frequently. Not as frequently as they once did, but resignation remains an effective way to end political turmoil. Imagine if Nixon or Clinton had quit before they had become laughing-stocks. The country could have moved on without all the rancor and poison in the body politic.
Most of Senator Lott's problem stems from being at that awkward age -- coming into adulthood between Jim Crow and Civil Rights. He still doesn't get it, and his efforts to blame others for his racist words just proves the point. For more than two weeks, he tried to convince us that endorsing the segregationist Dixiecrat campaign of Strom Thurmond in 1948 was merely an instance of poorly chosen words. It wasn't. It was a poorly chosen idea.
George Wallace ("Segregation Now, Segregation Forever") had the decency to change and even beg for forgiveness. He snatched a crumb of honor from his sad past before he died, and maybe he even made amends in his last term as governor of Alabama.
Senator Lott has four more years of his Senate term to go, and he could also make amends. He has a golden opportunity not only to save his reputation but also to bring minorities into the GOP if he does things right. Unfortunately, he will first have to realize that he has been doing the wrong thing all these years. And there is no sign of that yet.