Nov. 17, 2006
 
COMMENTARY: Oh, Hi, Mr. President
 
By Dale McFeatters
Scripps Howard News Service
 
It had to have been a sweet, sweet feeling for Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi.
 
Within hours after being elected to the No. 2 post in the Senate Republican leadership, Lott fielded congratulatory calls from President Bush, Vice President Cheney and White House chief of staff Josh Bolton. Bush and his aides are really going to be needing Lott's help, and he knows it.
 
Just four years ago the White House had greased his ouster as Senate GOP leader and Bush had ensured it with a public show of no-confidence. Lott said he had been "stabbed in the back."
 
One of the less attractive aspects of American public life is the merciless savaging of leadership figures for their misstatements. Do-overs aren't allowed and apologies accepted only grudgingly.
 
Still, Lott's misstep stands out.
 
At a 100th-birthday celebration for South Carolina Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond, then-GOP leader Lott said that if the rest of the country had followed Mississippi's lead in 1948 and voted for Thurmond for president, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years."
 
Perhaps he was only trying to be gracious to a senile old man, but it was a jarringly intemperate thing to say, especially from the careful, personable, media-savvy Lott.
 
In 1948, Lott's home state was the South's most segregated and Thurmond the South's leading segregationist, and that was the platform he ran on.
 
From the leader's post, Lott fell to something close to pariah status. But one of the more attractive aspects of American public life is that there are second chances. Lott has been in Congress 33 years, most of that time in leadership posts, where he mastered quietly building alliances and soliciting votes. He hadn't lost his touch during four years in the wilderness and this past week he blindsided Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee by one vote for the whip's job. That had to be even sweeter because Alexander was said to be the White House's candidate for the post.
 
The limelight-loving Lott promised that as No. 2 he would do nothing to eclipse the Senate Republicans' new leader, the self-effacing Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Maybe. Redemption? Yes. A complete personality makeover? No.