What sweet vindication it must be for Mississippi Republican Trent Lott to once again emerge victorious among his Senate colleagues. The White House engineered his downfall four years ago, and now Lott has made a remarkable comeback, winning the No. 2 leadership post in the Senate at a time when Karl Rove, the principal figure who betrayed him, looks out of touch.
It is a personal and political triumph for Lott, 65, who was forced out as majority leader of the Senate in 2002 after remarks he made at an event marking South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday. Lott said that if Thurmond had been elected president in 1948, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years …" Thurmond ran as a segregationist Dixiecrat, and Lott's words were interpreted as racist.
For a party that has just been through a big loss, and whose commitment to minority voters is a question mark, elevating Lott seems like a dubious move. The voters of Virginia punished Republican Sen. George Allen for a racially insensitive comment, yet the GOP promotes Lott, whose utterance was equally offensive. Did the senators who voted for him experience amnesia--or did they see something in Lott that made it worth taking on the baggage that he brings? For a party recovering from the shock of losing their majority in the House and Senate, Lott's election says it's back to the future for the Republicans. He won the Senate leadership by a single vote, 25 to 24, in the 49-member Republican caucus, edging out Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, heralded as a moderate and a fresh face.
The night before, Alexander was assuring everybody he would win with at least 30 votes. But leadership contests are conducted by secret ballot, and members are notorious for promising their vote to more than one candidate. Lott's proven skills in vote-counting came to the fore as he buttonholed members up until the last minute, taking nothing for granted, and remaining discreet about his chances, which were better than anybody realized. Lott would not be surprised. He pitched himself as the avatar of experience, the one who knows where the bodies are buried and where the votes are. That carried the day over Alexander's mushy message of moderation.
There is nothing moderate about Trent Lott, but when it comes to counting votes, ideology matters less than personal character and political skills. The job Lott won is one he has held before. He beat Wyoming's Alan Simpson in 1995 by a single vote to become whip, the official Senate title that derives from "whipping" your colleagues into line to win votes. Upon losing a race he expected to win, Simpson invoked a line first used by the late Mo Udall, the Arizona senator who said the difference between a caucus and a cactus is that with a cactus "the pricks are on the outside." Lott became leader of his party after Bob Dole left the Senate to run for president. Lott was king of the Hill until rudely replaced by Rove, who saw Lott's gaffe as a chance to install a more media-friendly figure in the key leadership spot. Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist, Rove's handpicked successor, turned out to be a disaster. A heart surgeon by training and new to politics, he didn't understand the job and couldn't build consensus.
Lott is an old hand at bringing together the different forces in the party. He's a dealmaker in the best sense, and if the two parties hope to accomplish anything in the two years remaining in the Bush presidency, the skills Lott brings to the table will be needed by the GOP. "This was a choice between someone with a track record and an unknown," says a former Republican Senate aide, who is no fan of Lott's but thinks he is the best choice for the job. The alternative, Lamar Alexander, is hardly an unknown. He was secretary of Education under the first President Bush and a popular governor in Tennessee. He also ran for president in 1996 and 2000. Still, by clubby Senate standards, Alexander is a novice with no experience in the insider trade of vote counting. After the experience with Frist, who was seen as a weak and ineffectual leader, "They didn't want to roll the dice again on an unknown," says the Senate aide.
If you were to ask a hundred people in Washington who is the least likely to learn from a bad experience, it would be Trent Lott. It took him days to issue a grudging apology for his remarks at the Thurmond birthday party, and as the debacle dragged on, Lott still looked like he didn't get what happened. But he was forced into soul-searching, and at the end of the process, instead of sulking or working to undermine his successor, he buckled down, did his best to remain relevant and waited for an opportunity. If Lott can come back after four years in the wilderness, maybe his party can, too.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
