Peggy Noonan: Counsel for Trent

Opinion Journal ^ | 12/13/2002 | Peggy Noonan

[Pokey78]

What Lott told us last week, and what he should do now.

People approach the Trent Lott story in political terms. Does it hurt the Republican Party? Do the Democrats get more out of the scandal if they successfully campaign for Mr. Lott's departure, or do they gain more if he continues as GOP leader, functioning as a handy daily symbol of the racism that resides in the secret heart of all conservatives? What did President Bush's comments mean? And by the way, why isn't the New York Times flooding the zone?

[beckett]

The people of Mississippi elected Lott and they, and only they, have a right to decide if he should go.

The people of Mississippi can elect Lott as often as they like. It's entirely up to them, just as you say.

Lott's position as Senate Majority Leader is another matter entirely, of course. That is a leadership job which gives him a national voice in the Republican Party. He has damaged his party badly and needs to give it up.

[ellery]

BUMP!

[swheats]

Lordy, Lordy this is a real quandry. How is it that many blacks are willing to forgive and give Lott the benefit of the doubt and many high profile whites are wanting him to move along?

Does this jeopardize their standing if they don't call for his head? I don't follow Peggy as closely as everyone else, but did she give a huge write-up when it was found out that Jesse spit in the white person's food?

Fair and balanced reporting is definately needed to keep this in perspective. If she or anyone else thinks that Jesse's "shaking the tree" for his fellow downtrodden brothas and sistas then he's gotten many of the white folk hoodwinked. There are many on both sides with secret hatred in their hearts.

I hope this current issue brings about good that we can finally prick this boil that has been seething and get back to the weightier issues.

Due to a limited schedule I really don't know if this is playing big in the real world or just among the political on CNN, Fox News, and web boards. I can say the small amount of time I've been out and about this wasn't conversation material.

[onedoug]

There are two races of people: the decent and the indecent. Lott should have been removed from his leadership position when he caved on impeachment, and should finally be removed now, for that same reason. His piling on only compounds his indecency.

[dpwiener]

Does anyone really think that Trent Lott will step down and stay in the Senate?

Yes.

I have no doubt that he's been trying to use the threat of resignation from the Senate as leverage with his fellow Republican Senators to try to maintain his position as Majority Leader. But it's pretty much an empty threat, and they know it.

First, the Republicans are far more likely to lose their majority if Lott stays on, due to defections of Chaffee, Snow, McCain, and others who will not want to have to explain to their constituents why they continued to support Lott. Other Republican Senators know that Lott as Majority Leader provides a perfect excuse for fence jumping, as well as threatening their own re-election prospects. They all know how to read the political tea leaves, or they wouldn't be where they are, and they know that Lott is toast. The only question is the manner of his removal as Majority Leader.

Bush signalled that he's not going to go to the mat to defend Trent Lott, and hence no other Senators are going to go out on a limb to defend Lott. Notice that there's been an incredible amount of silence by Republican Senators. The media feeding frenzy is still growing (pushed along by many conservatives), and Lott will not surive it.

Intense negotiations are going on behind the scenes right now to pave the way for Lott to step down. Yesterday (Wednesday) I predicted that it would take 2 to 6 days. My best guess now is that Lott will make a speech late tomorrow (Friday) afternoon, in which he'll explain that he's been unfairly maligned but for the good of the country he is withdrawing as Majority Leader.

And that will be that. He'll stay on as a Senator, because it's still a very powerful position and there's nothing like it available outside of politics. Lott enjoys power, and he's not going to just give it up. And no, he couldn't make millions as a lobbyist if he resigned from the Senate and let a Democrat be appointed in his place. If he did that he'd be labelled a worse traitor than Jeffords, and he'd be hated by all the other Republican Senators who might lose their majority committee chairmanships and perks. Hence he'd have no influence to peddle.

Watch it happen.

[Nick Danger]

I feel she questioned his integrity

I think she all but called him a closet racist, with a penchant for talking about it in code. Once you decide that, "the good of the party" has nothing to do with it... you just don't want the sumbitch around. Hers is one of very few commentaries -- that isn't just leftist name-calling -- to say this out loud.

[davidtalker]

While I would love to see this type of speech, it would not serve us well.

Lott should go home to Mississippi. He should go to various prominent Black Churches this weekend. He must explain himself there. He should then hold a news conference and allow this entire incident to be aired out. If the people of Mississippi are brought into Lott's confidence. If he goes to the Churches, and as a Christian, asks for understanding he may put this behind him.

Personally, I think lot is a boob. He doesn't serve the Conservative movement well. However, it is time to attempt to fix what he broke. The above actions would disarm the long knives of the Left. Lott should, eventually, be replaced as the face of the GOP in Congress. It should be done on our terms not Al Sharpton's or Maxine Waters'.

[Reo]

Peggy Noonan now joins the growing chorus for leadership change which also includes Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Cal Thomas, Thomas Sowell, John Fund, Mona Charen, and Michelle Malkin. A pretty impressive group....I hope the Pubbie senators are listening....

[The Great Satan]

It is hard to believe that Trent Lott meant to suggest that segregation was OK.

Hardly. Have a few drinks with the average German of World War II vintage (and even a few younger ones) and they'll be telling you how good it was under Hitler, and how the Jews were "asking for it." Same for Italians and Mussolini, Russians and Stalin, and so on. People aren't that different the world over. Most are comfortable with the ideas and prejudices they grew up with and, at best, only pay lip service to any "enlightened" ideas they picked up after age 25. That's just the reality of human nature. Doesn't mean that Trent Lott is a monster, any more than your average crypto-Nazi German septuagenerian is a monster. They're just average, mediocre people, that's all.

[freepatriot32]

nope it wont work because the reporters would interupt him in mid sentence with this little bit of news

Trent Lott's Segregationist College Days At Ole Miss, the Senator helped lead a fight to keep blacks out of his national fraternity

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott helped lead a successful battle to prevent his college fraternity from admitting blacks to any of its chapters, in a little-known incident now four decades old. At a time when racial issues were roiling campuses across the South, some chapters of Sigma Nu fraternity in the Northeast were considering admitting African-American members, a move that would have sent a powerful statement through the tradition-bound world of sororities and fraternities. At the time, Lott was president of the intra-fraternity council at the University of Mississippi. When the issue came to a head at Sigma Nu's national convention — known as a "Grand Chapter" — in the early 1960s, "Trent was one of the strongest leaders in resisting the integration of the national fraternity in any of the chapters," recalls former CNN President Tom Johnson, then a Sigma Nu member at the University of Georgia.

The bitter debate over the issue took place at the convention in a New Orleans hotel, as Johnson recalls. Sigma Nu's executive secretary Richard Fletcher, a legendary figure in the fraternity, pleaded with the Sigma Nus to find some common ground between those who wanted to integrate and those who didn't, Johnson says. But the southerners were unbending about permitting no exceptions to the all-white policy. With their chapters threatening a walkout, the fraternity voted overwhelmingly to remain all-white.

Johnson, who voted on Lott's side, now calls that vote "one of the biggest mistakes of my life." Over the years, as Johnson became a media executive, word would get back to him from time to time that Lott was repeating the tale to mutual acquaintances — to embarrass him, Johnson believes.

Asked about the fraternity vote, Lott responded through a spokesman, who said: "Those were different times in a different era. Senator Lott believes that segregation is immoral and repudiates it." The spokesman also notes that Sigma Nu integrated in the late 1960s, and that its Ole Miss chapter now accepts African-Americans.

It was Lott himself who first told me this story, back in the mid 1980s. He was a Republican Congressman and I was a reporter freshly assigned to cover Capitol Hill for the Los Angeles Times, where Johnson was then the publisher. "In later life, it seemed that Trent felt he 'had something on me,' when he would share the fact that he and I had been on the same side in the national fraternity debate," says Johnson, who later went to work as an aide in Lyndon Johnson's White House and more recently helped lead the battle to have the confederate battle flag removed in Georgia. Johnson recalls of Lott back then: "He was against integration. I was against splitting the fraternity. Yet my vote had the same impact and is subject to the same interpretation — that I also opposed integration. I am very disappointed in myself. I hope my record for the past 40 years speaks louder than that."

Lott has been under fire since last week, when he declared that his state was proud to have voted for Strom Thurmond's segregationist ticket in 1948. "And if the rest of the country had followed our lead," Lott added in remarks at Thurmond's 100th birthday party, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years either." Lott has since apologized, and on Thursday, President Bush said the apology was deserved. "Any suggestion that the segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive and it is wrong," Bush declared.

Lott was a witness to one of the pivotal episodes in that past. During his senior year at Ole Miss, violence erupted there when U.S. marshals moved to install Air Force veteran James Meredith as its first African-American student. Lott was not among the students advocating integration, but did succeed in persuading his fraternity brothers not to join in the rioting. In 1997, Lott told TIME: "Yes, you could say I favored segregation then. I don't now. … The main thing was, I felt the federal government had no business sending in troops to tell the state what to do."

[boris]

"Peggy Noonan now joins the growing chorus for leadership change which also includes Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Cal Thomas, Thomas Sowell, John Fund, Mona Charen, and Michelle Malkin. A pretty impressive group....I hope the Pubbie senators are listening...."

Leadership change, sure. Resign from the Senate and give it to the Dems again? Nuts.

--Boris

[lainde]

That would be a great, slam-dunk speech...I doubt he'd have the integrity or courage to give it. Remember, we're talking Trent Lott here...

[lainde]

Hope springs eternal...

[KeyWest]

TGS- The most coherent explanations of what happened that I have read so far. Well done. We carry the propaganda we learn in youth and, without introspection and purging, it stays with us and will come out in what we say.

[Bluntpoint]

I grew up in a catholic neighborhood. Big time church goers. One on one they were very pious, soft spoken people preaching how great God's love is. Then, the very next sentence: "Danm nigg@rs!!!"

[section9]

I don't agree with you.

I think Bush spanked Trent just hard enough to let him know that what he did was stupid.

I don't believe that Lott will resign his seat, however. Primarily because Lott has been very good at bringing the goodies back to Mississippi and will probably rate a good committee chair. Lott is popular back home. He will need to mend some fences, but on the whole, when all is said and done, he'll stay where he is.

But he won't remain as majority leader past mid-January.

The Conservative Base in the Senate sees him as the guy who gets rolled by Daschle all the time. But in this Senate, we need all the Republicans we can get, so Bush will ease up on him, despite his stupidity.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[copycat]

I don't often, but I disagree with your analysis on this one. Lott MIGHT step down from leadership, but probably not. However, there is NO WAY he will resign his seat.

I don't think Bush would let him jeopardize the thin majority that hundreds of others worked so hard to forge.

If Lott steps out of the spotlight and just continues to be a back-bench Senator for the Republicans, W. can still get his nominees through. And hell, I don't think his recent comments will hurt him as badly in Mississippi as they do in the country at large, so he could keep getting re-elected.

IMHO, the best thing that could happen is if Mr. Lott stands up to Big Race, and quietly resigns the leadership post for personal reasons this summer.

[RJCogburn]

No, I disagree.

[chilepepper]

Trent Lott is an a**hole and a moron and must go. His punishment should be to STAY in the senate but not as majority leader, a job he has never done well.

Anyone who spends any time defending this twitt on "philosophical grounds" has a room temperature IQ.

[katana]

I respect your opinion but think it would be too little and too late. The most salient point now is that the last thing the democrats want is for Lott to step aside as leader. If he does, they will of course scream bloody murder that he has to also resign his seat, but that will have a fraction of the resonance the current situation has in the press.

If it were just the boneheaded statements and clumsy apologies he's made it would be one thing. The other reason he has to go is that he has been an utter failure over the six years he's been majority or minority leader of the Republicans in the Senate.

He has to go, but quietly he also has to be given every incentive to NOT give up his seat. Give him his choice of a chairmanship, but find someone to serve as leader who knows how to be an iron hand in a velvet glove. That above all would really ruin the democrats' day, and I for one am always up for just about anything which has that as a goal.