JACKSON - The road to Hell, it has been said, is paved with good intentions. Trent Lott apparently intended to make an old man feel good on his 100th birthday.
Regardless of his intentions, Sen. Lott put his foot squarely in his mouth at Strom Thurmond's birthday party and then proceeded to chew a few inches of it to the bloody bone. His comments regarding Thurmond's "Dixiecrat" days were inappropriate and racially offensive to many.
America would indeed have not been better off had the Dixiecrats' anti-integration platform prevailed in 1948. It was wrong then, it's wrong now.
Realizing that and caught in a crossfire of deserved, predictable criticism, Lott bellied up to the bank of media microphones and issued a formal apology for his mistake. That's what he should have done - and there'S nothing more he should do. He made a mistake and he took responsibility for it. End of story.
Now come Jesse Jackson and Al Gore - those paragons of virtue - to say that Lott should resign because of what he said at Thurmond's birthday party.
Seems that Jackson and Gore have double standards in terms of their view that resignations are the appropriate atonement for political and moral lapses and that apologies don't count.
Jackson didn't resign from Operation PUSH and the Rainbow Coalition when it was revealed that he used Rainbow Coalition funds raised to fight racism and provide economic opportunity to disadvantaged African-American kids to pay off his paramour with whom he fathered an illegitimate love child. No, Jackson just apologized and moved on.
Gore, when confronted with the fact that former President Bill Clinton lied to the public in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, never uttered a word of encouragement to his boss to resign from his office. Clinton apologized and moved on - and Gore never publicly questioned it.
So most of the firestorm of criticism aimed at Lott can be dismissed for what it is - Democrats fresh from a mid-term election defeat capitalizing on a stupid, insensitive remark by a high-ranking Republican. That's the way partisan politics is played in America, and Lott isn't above playing hardball politics himself. Lott pressed the GOP advantage during the Lewinsky scandal big time.
More thoughtful Democrats - like current Majority Leader Sen. Tom Daschle and Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove - were inclined to accept Lott's apology and his explanation that he intended no racial affront in his attempt to praise Thurmond.
I suspect Lott was simply trying to be effusive in praise of Thurmond and make reference to the fact that Thurmond was on the Dixiecrat ballot in 1948 with Mississippian Fielding Wright. It wasn't a policy speech Lott was making, it was a birthday party toast.
On balance, Lott's life and 30-year voting record on Capitol Hill is not that of a racist. The former Ole Miss cheerleader is conservative, but his record has not been that of a conservative who is mean of spirit or hard of heart.
But as one of the four or five most visible Republicans in America and one from Mississippi to boot, Lott will always be held to a higher standard in terms of his public utterances on race. The most disturbing facet of this current flap is that Lott apparently lost sight of that fact - again.
Like his 1992 Council of Conservative Citizens convention appearance, Lott's unfortunate remarks reinforce every negative stereotype about Mississippi and Mississippi politicians and hands his legion of political enemies a club with which to pound him unmercifully.
Should Lott resign? No. Should he have apologized? Yes. Will he learn from this furor? Absolutely.
Or at least he must if he is to continue to lead the GOP.
