Fire Trent Lott

The birthday party controversy is only the latest evidence that Mr. Lott, the second most prominent elected official in the Republican Party, has never figured any of this out, or come to grips with the bad old days in his state. If he had, he could never have said that his state was "proud" of having given its electoral votes to Mr. Thurmond in 1948 -- at a time when most black Mississippians were barred from voting and sometimes killed for making the attempt...

...unless the president wants to spend his next campaign explaining the majority leader's behavior over and over, he should urge the Senate Republicans to get somebody else for the job.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/12/opinion/12THU1.html

here are 51 Republican members of the United States Senate. Surely they can find someone to be majority leader besides Trent Lott.

Mr. Lott was in full-bore apology mode yesterday, trying to explain why, at Strom Thurmond's 100th-birthday party last week, he publicly bemoaned the fact that Mr. Thurmond had not won the 1948 presidential election, when he ran as a segregationist protest candidate. We have since learned that Mr. Lott said much the same thing in 1980, at a campaign rally for Ronald Reagan in Mississippi. Mr. Lott, at that time a congressman, said that if America had elected Mr. Thurmond president "we wouldn't be in the mess we are today."

The incoming majority leader certainly was in a mess of his own by Monday, and his first attempt to dodge the controversy began with the classic words of the non-apologetic apologist, expressing sorrow if anyone had taken offense at his remarks, and making an oblique reference to "discarded policies." Discarded is a term best used for worn socks or outdated computers, not poll taxes and lynchings. After being yelled at by practically everybody, including conservative Republicans, Mr. Lott got the message, and yesterday called his remarks "terrible." He also asked an interviewer plaintively whether he was supposed to tell Mr. Thurmond he wished he had lost.

Southern white politicians who lived under segregation and the civil rights movement either repress the thought that anything terrible went on in their region or remember it all the time. They are especially sensitive to the fact that people whom they loved and honored did -- or at least endorsed -- awful things. Coming to terms with it makes them wiser politicians, and perhaps better people.

The birthday party controversy is only the latest evidence that Mr. Lott, the second most prominent elected official in the Republican Party, has never figured any of this out, or come to grips with the bad old days in his state. If he had, he could never have said that his state was "proud" of having given its electoral votes to Mr. Thurmond in 1948 -- at a time when most black Mississippians were barred from voting and sometimes killed for making the attempt.

No one has put more effort than George W. Bush into ending the image of the Republican Party as a whites-only haven. For all the disagreement that many African-Americans have with his policies, few can doubt Mr. Bush's commitment to a multiracial America. But unless the president wants to spend his next campaign explaining the majority leader's behavior over and over, he should urge the Senate Republicans to get somebody else for the job.