The Invisible Hand

Lott’s Got to Go

Is there something about serving in the U.S. Senate that scrambles your thought processes? I mean, just take a look at Strom Thurmond and you can see the toll it’s taken on him.

But I’m really thinking about Sen. Trent Lott. Does he actually believe that going on BET and saying he now favors affirmative action will earn him support among African Americans? Among anyone at all?

I think what he said at Thurmond’s birthday party is typical Senate log rolling. They always praise their fellow Senators in over the top language. What’s appalling to me is Lott’s behavior since then.

He’s proven to be a political ignoramus and, even worse, a self-deluded boor. Outside the Senate, craven political sausage making just doesn’t look very appetizing. “I’ll trade you one quasi-racist bon mot for my support of your destructive social policy.” Doesn’t fly. Certainly not on national television.

If Lott were in the Senate for any other reason than the perks and prestige he would have said on BET that there are a lot of problems with race in America but not one of them has anything to do with the cadaverous centegenarian from South Carolina.

Indeed, the problem with race in this country is that while most whites support integration lock stock and barrel, those who claim to speak for the African-American community are pushing for separate dorms on college campuses, separate standards for hiring, separate expectations for success and civic duty.

Lott could have used his appearance to ask some provocative questions of his own, like at what point did Dr. King’s dream of society ‘where we are judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character’ become a vision of a world were skin color is the factor that trumps every other consideration?

He could have noted how ironic it was that he grew up in a segregated state controlled by Democrats and now works in a segregated city controlled by Democrats. He might even have asked exactly what the Democrat party had done in the last 35 years that justified such lockstep support from African American voters.

Of course, he did none of these things because, to Senator Lott, the only things that matter are the continuance of his Senatorial privileges.

That’s the reason Lott should go and go now. Hell, let him resign throw control of the Senate back to the Dems.

Just keep him far away from the Republican Party