Lott: What it should be about

By By Buddy Bynum / editor
Dec. 15, 2002
Years ago, in another life, as a young staff member for then-U.S. Rep. Trent Lott, I learned some valuable lessons. Number one, everything in Washington, D.C., is political. Everything.
It's our nation's way of coping with a diversity of viewpoints that all come together in the capital city. Washington is the place where differences over policy and ideology are either settled, some might say compromised, or allowed to simmer until they boil over.
Washington, D.C. is the place where careers are made or broken as they strain through the filter of politics and the intensive glare of a national media whose work magnifies every single twitch of every single political creature that dares darken the doors of Washington's institutions.
We Americans drive this process because we cherish a fundamental freedom, the right to see government done in the open. We are either the victims or beneficiaries of governmental actions. We are avid consumers of print and broadcast news and advertising. We are alternatively attracted to or repulsed by political messages.
Ultimately, as citizens, we deserve the opportunity to hear the facts and then form our own opinions.
Winging it'
I cringed when I heard what Sen. Lott said at Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party. As a former press secretary, somewhat experienced in the world of Washington politics and media relations, I knew there would be hell to pay.
Also, knowing Trent Lott for nearly all of the 30 years he's spent in Congress, I immediately felt what he conceded in a televised news conference on Friday. His words about Thurmond's failed 1948 bid for the presidency the ones about us not having all of the problems we have if Thurmond had won were not in the script. He was, as he said, "winging it … caught up in the moment."
And I believe it because the Trent Lott I know is a logical thinker, mature in judgment, gracious in manner and anything but a racist.
And now let me be clear: None of this is to condone what he said. I agree with what President Bush said and with what Sen. Lott said when he apologized all three times after he whipped up the tornado. Lott, clearly, was wrong, wrong, wrong in Thurmond's birthday comments.
But racist?
Never before told
Let me tell you a little story of how then-Rep. Lott handled one constituent case while I was on his staff, one of literally thousands of cases involving veterans benefits, social security and Medicaid or Medicare claims, and assorted other problems people occasionally have with their government.
A single mom from Pascagoula called Lott at home on a Saturday morning with an unusual problem. Her only son, a drug addict, had somehow found his way to Washington, D.C., where he was living in squalor in a dangerous part of town with dangerous people in dangerous circumstances.
She feared for her son's life, and emotionally asked her congressman to go get the young man, and, in whatever condition he found him, put him on a plane for home. She would let him know Lott was coming.
Lott himself drove into Washington the next day, found the young man half out of his mind on some chemical compound or other, sobered him up as best he could, drove him to the airport, bought his ticket and put him on the plane. And then followed up by phone to make sure the young man arrived safely back home to his family.
I have no doubt Trent Lott saved a life that freezing February morning in 1985.
The catch in this story is that the mom and her son were African American. It never made the papers and this is the first time I've written about it. But in view of the events of the last few days, it's an important illustration of Lott's character as a human being that the race of the people involved never factored into his response. It was a personal, immediate attempt to help people who needed his help.
So when Trent Lott says he'll work toward "a color blind society where every American has an equal opportunity to succeed," I think I'll take him at his word and let the politics take care of itself.