I had a couple of hours to waste, so I wasted them reading Trent Lott's autobiography, "Herding Cats." Predictably, it was a second-rate book: Lott isn't a good writer (sometimes his hackery sinks to Limbaugh-esque levels); he's done surprisingly little in his career on Capitol Hill; and his main talents seem to be (1) counting votes and (2) sucking up to powerful people around him--a strategy that worked until Karl Rove decided to throw him under the train. In short, not much of a story to tell.
Lott was a frat boy at Ole Miss, and he's remained in a Sigma Nu bubble ever since. For that reason, I actually believe his explanation that his remarks at Strom Thurmond's birthday party weren't racist. They were the product of his tone-deafness rather than actual bias.
For what it's worth, I'd like to share a few sound bites from the book. I'll call it "Trent Lott in His Own Words."
On Nixon's resignation under threat of impeachment:
This was a constitutional crisis, and I had contributed to it.
Perhaps it never should have reached that point. It was the classic case of the cover-up--obstruction of justice--being worse than the crime itself, and the press pursued it with a vengeance.
Now that a member of the Administration has been accused of obstruction, does he feel the same way?
On the "Gang of 19" formed to get a budget through Congress in 1987"
Our assignations appeared on no printed schedules.
Gosh, I hope not. We have enough sex scandals in Washington.
On the practice of holding votes open beyond customary time limits:
One night there was a close ote; in fact, it ended with a tie with all normal time expired. The speaker held the vote open for 25 minutes while the Democrats frantically tried to switch votes...
The unfairness of it all caused me to lose control. At one point, I became that I pounded the rostrum in the well of the house until it bent.
Evidently this so traumatized him that he completely forgot that the House leadership held a vote open for three hours on the Medicare "reform" bill in 2003.
On Democratic hardball tactics in Congress:
[T]he Democrats had been in control for so long that they had adopted bullyboy tactics to enforce their power. Using their superior numbers, they simply rammed their bills through.
A good example of Right Wing Debate Tactic Number 11: Accuse the other side of what you're guilty of.
On a conversation with confidant Dick Morris--yes, that Dick Morris--about the 1996 welfare reform bill:
"Look, Dick, I said. "I'll work secretly with Clinton. I'll face down the objectors in my own party; I'll offer changes even if I know they'll be politically unpopular. But I don't want to deal with the First Lady."
Morris laughed. "Don't worry, I'll handle her."
Hmm.
On Richard Nixon:
"In 1988, when I was running for the Senate and Nixon had been out of office for 14 years, he attended a fund-raiser for me in New York City on the Amway Corporation yacht, Enterprise."
Ah, Amway Corporation. The son of its co-founder is running for governor of Michigan.
On Bush 41 and his wife:
"President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, were always gracious to Tricia and me. Tricia loved Barbara because she is what she is--a straight-talking and kind woman."
Barbara is "kind," but only if you're the right kind of Katrina victim. A millionaire Republican senator with a mansion on the Gulf Coast, for instance.
On the weeks immediately after September 11:
"The outcome was a legislative treasure trove that helped launch President Bush's war on terrorism and usher in a new political era."
The biggest understatement in the book.
On the Patriot Act:
"A lot of people, including libertarians and some conservatives, were concerned about [the wiretap] provisions. But it was good legislation, and to this day I wouldn't change a word of it."
I'll bet you a dollar to a donut that Lott has never read the full text of the Act.
On George W. Bush's intentions toward Iraq:
"In the summer of 2002, even as the first moves on a new Homeland Security Department were under way, the president began lobbying for an open-ended resolution empowering him to wage war on Iraq.
Members of Congress had heard rumors that the president might be eager to take on Saddam Hussein. And Bush had made clear his intentions to wage war on Iraq in several of our private meetings."
I wonder if he had the audacity to criticize the Downing Street Memo.
On the intelligence briefings about Iraq:
"From what I heard in the briefings, I had every reason to believe that Saddam Hussein still had stockpiles of chemical weapons, and had enlarged his capacity to launch them over long distances. And I was convinced that he was continuing his quest to acquire nuclear weapons."
Once he found out that the pre-war intelligence was flawed, Lott executed this pirouette:
"I still believe the Iraq war resolution was correct, based on Saddam Hussein's conduct--his resistance to weapons inspectors, and his continuing threat to the region. Furthermore, the reasons for overthrowing Iraq went far beyond Iraq and what was done in that country. The war was also meant to send a message to countries such as Syria and Libya that America stood for democracy, and that we were not going to stand by and have people murdered by dictators unanswerable to anyone."
On the furor over his remarks at Strom Thurmond's birthday party:
"To read any more into these comments is wrong. The fault isn't with me, it is with the evil commentators who are reading too much into what I said."
Yup. Blame the liberal media.
On the Senate compromise earlier on judicial filibusters earlier this year:
"I could be wrong, but it's hard to imagine this arrangement holding if President Bush appoints a principled conservative--or conservatives,if he has more than one opportunity--to the high court when he is given the opportunity. Democrats will declare it an 'extraordinary circumstance', and we'll have to reconsider the 'nuclear option'."
Just as I suspected. That agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on.
P.S. The book is full of awful mixed metaphors:
"I'm not sure who stirred the pot during this coup. I did find one of the scalpers."
"Other media outlets painted me as a white knight who saved Bill Frist's bacon."
Ouch. Stop him before he writes again.