LOTT TO FRIST TO 2003

The worst conclusion Republicans could draw from the announcement by Sen. Trent Lott yesterday that he would relinquish his role as Senate majority leader is that this is an opportunity to “get beyond” or “move past” this or any of the other euphemisms employed to allow an embarrassed organization to ignore a serious internal problem. The Republican Party’s leader, President George Bush, and its next majority leader, likely Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, should hold the party firmly in the middle of its race problem and address it directly.

There is no better opportunity than right now to do this. The president was clearly and deeply unhappy with Sen. Lott’s comments and the exposure of the senator’s record on civil-rights legislation after the president himself had worked hard to attract minority voters. Whether Sen. Frist will can do better will become apparent in the coming months, but there is plenty the party can do in the meantime.

It could, for instance, stop its more extreme member from acting like affirmative action is just short of a communist plot to ruin America. Certainly there are legitimate philosophical arguments against programs the seek to specially promote minorities, but there are also real and practical reasons to support them, reasons that have to do with long-term disadvantage, subtle discrimination and outright racism. Showing more respect for the impact of these reasons, appreciating their seriousness, even if ultimately disagreeing with the remedy of affirmative action, would be a huge improvement.

Another way to demonstrate this is through the selection of judges, particularly at the appeals court level, who are more than ideologically in lockstep with the Federalist Society. This will be an especially sensitive topic in the coming months, and if the president wants to appeal to African Americans in a way that suggests their lives matter more than their votes, he will review his judicial selection process.

Sen. Susan Collins said it well for Republicans yesterday: “Ours is the party of Lincoln and ours is the country of freedom and justice for all. The action Senator Lott has taken today is perhaps the best and most appropriate way for him to underscore the sincerity of his contrition.”

Sen. Collins and Sen. Olympia Snowe have both expressed their support for Sen. Frist as the next majority leader, as likely will all members of the caucus. As a heart surgeon, he already has shown himself to be better informed on health-care issues than Sen. Lott. Though a decade younger, he appears more widely experienced. And the Tennessean even seems more aware of the Northeast as something more than the place that has a shipyard in Maine and that still likes Sen. Jeffords of Vermont. (After being graduated from Princeton and Harvard Medical School, he trained at Massachusetts General Hospital.)

The knock against him is that he is too beholden to the White House and might operate the Senate as an extension of the administration. It is too soon to draw any conclusions of this sort. But the next couple of weeks, especially after Congress returns Jan. 6, will demonstrate whether the GOP has understood the lesson of Sen. Lott’s fall and whether, in 2003, the longing for 1948 finally will be banished.