I've never been a big fan of Trent Lott. Indeed, the one word that comes to my mind when I think of the Mississippi Senator's four and a half years as Majority Leader is "squandered". Simply put Lott wasted dozens of opportunities and was easily outmanuvered by Slick Willy. Despite my serious and severe problems with Senator Lott, I have to stand up when he is being attacked unfairly as a racist for suggesting that America would be better off if Strom Thurmond had won the 1948 presidential election.
There are a couple of key facts, everyone seems to miss. First, how would America have been different had Thurmond won in 1948 instead of Truman? What great Civil Rights laws were passed during the Truman administration that Strom Thurmond would have prevented? Logically, if Thurmond had won the 1948 presidential election, he would have done most things little different from what Harry Truman had done. American Blacks would be no worse off if Truman'd lost the 1948 election. Period. End of story.
What Lott was talking about was the character of Strom Thurmond and the type of person he was. He wasn't talking about a desire for the reversal of the progress of Civil Rights (which wasn't made in the Truman Administration). Here's a good question for open-minded liberals. Was Thurmond a virulent racist or simply fighting for a principle of States rights? Remember it was this man who was the first employer of Armstrong Williams, the black syndicated talk show host.
Second, Time Magazine has run a nice little hit piece on Lott for his role as a Southern leader of a college fraternity who opposed integration of his fraternity. This attack on Senator Lott is quite interesting as the media is being doubly hypocritical.
First, Lott was little more than a boy who was adhering to cultural norms during the Civil Rights debate. Two democrats, Senators Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-SC) and Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) were men. The former raised the Confederate flag over the South Carolina statehouse in defiance of integration while the latter was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Where's the outrage over these far more egregious transgressions?
The media has also told us that it doesn't matter what our political leaders did in college or while they were young. If Al Gore smoked pot for ten years. Who cares? (non-story). If Bill Clinton dodged the draft, boys will be boys. The only exception to that rule is if you're a Republican.
George Bush was rumored to have used Cocaine. And now Trent Lott held politically incorrect views while in college. These sins are different because they were committed by Republicans.
As I look at the Democratic Party, I see a party that has no moral standing to make it's attacks on the leader of the United States Senate. Trent Lott (who was six years old at the time) may have voted for Strom Thurmond, but each and every Senate Democrat who was serving in 1999 voted to acquit someone that the distinguished Senator Byrd admitted was guilty of "high crimes and misdemeanors". They voted for a man who betrayed America's natural security in order to win a second term. They voted for a man who history will repudiate as one of America's worst Presidents.
While we don't know what Strom Thurmond would have done as President, we do know what Bill Clinton did and for that reason every Democrat in the Senate should resign in utter shame.