It was "a mistake of the head and not of the heart," Trent Lott averred in one of his multiple apologies for the statement that "we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years" if the country had followed Mississippi’s lead to vote for then Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond in the 1948 presidential election. It was a stupid statement on the part of a senate leader who should know doggone well that his party is the daily target of spurious accusations of racism by political enemies determined to gain power by any means.

In his confused blather to assuage the storm whipped by the ill-tought remark, Mr Lott dug himself into a deeper hole by alluding to Thurmond’s former segregationist positions as "discarded policies." At a time when the political establishment and its hangers-on were parsing his verbal writhings, he should have said "wrong," and not "discarded." It would have been not just political, but proper. Only when he finally got the message from President Bush’s perfectly calibrated dressing-down did Mr Lott make an apology that essentially acknowledged his being a blockhead, and rightly so. It is not important that this will not placate Maxine Waters and others who make a living by endlessly claiming to be insulted by about everything and everybody. What is important is that the whole affair, including the apology, suggests something disquieting about Mr Lott’s fitness to serve as the senate Republican leader.

Reasonable observers of the gaffe understand that the deplorable statement was made in jest in the celebration of the hundredth birthday of a man still a senator in title, but whose highest claim to any sort of admiration may not have been at all his 1948 run for the presidency. Ol’ Strom could have instead been commended for having unambiguously mended his segregationist ways, or for having been around longer than wristwatches and aeroplanes, or, better, for having volunteered for duty in World War II at age forty when he had no such legal obligation, and being dropped with the 82^nd Airborne over Normandy in the wee hours of June 6, 1944. Taken in by the festive mood and eager to make the centenarian feel good in this rather exceptional occasion, Mr Lott proved that levity is not his forte by bringing back to the fore a fifty-four-year-old event better forgotten, and this is dumb, dumb, dumb.

I watched the press conference in which the senator issued his latest apology, which turned out to be better than his previous muddlings. But one thing really bothered me. It was the quasi-reflexive smile on his face while he took in questions from reporters, as if each question was a great joke, or as if he was lost in space. I know, the smile really is a long-practiced mask designed to elicit sympathy in political meetings. But I saw the same smile when Mr Lott was answering or rather not answering Mr Daschle’s vicious slanders against Republicans, and when Mr Lott pledged himself to bipartisanship when he did not have to and high-fived for the occasion the nasty man from South Dakota. It seems that the senator in his desire to be liked is willing to take kick in the shin after kick in the shin with a smile and pretend not to notice. But he should know better. Each assault is an assault not against Trent Lott, but against Republicans and as such should not remain vithout proper response. Mr Lott, Republican leader in the senate, should understand that his responsibility is also to Republicans and not just to Trent Lott of Mississippi. Whether he may personally accept to be spat upon or dragged in the mud every day by the Democrats because he otherwise derives great pleasure from being a high-ranking senator, he nevertheless should realize that his apparent lack of spine and imagination do not befit a leader who has to face the malign propaganda of a disloyal opposition.

It is probable that Trent Lott is a good man, but a man whom too much time in politics has made shallow, too narrowly focused on his own turf, too centered on process, and a tad out of touch with realities. This why I would not wring my hands if someone else took over his position of leadership in the senate. I do not question whether he has done well by Mississippi---which he must have---as this is for Mississippians to decide and none of my business. What I question is his political effectiveness as a party leader who makes mistakes of the head and not of the heart, as I am darn suspicious of politicians who appear to believe that the heart (emotions) is a better adviser than the head (reason) in matters of governance. History teems with dictators whose heads did not control the evil excesses of their hateful hearts. And it is fitting here to point out that Dixiecrat opposition to civil-rights legislation was driven much more by emotion than by reason. Any cool head knew that only equality before the law conformed to the principles enumerated in the constitution. Jefferson and other founders expressed that much two hundred years ago when they mulled over the wrongs of "the peculiar institution," but could not come up with a practicable solution in the context of the times, because too many hearts seem to stand in the way. More recently, social programs conceived from the heart---politicians felt so saintly about them---have wreaked havoc among the very people they were supposed to help. For Trent Lott to invoke his good heart and blame his faulty head makes him a rather poor leader. A good leader should have a good head.

Predictably, the apology included the obligatory formula, "I take full responsibility for my remarks," followed by a call for a no less obligatory forgiveness that people are supposed to find in their Christian hearts. In recent years, we have heard that bromidic song so many times from politicians caught in the act that it has lost any meaning other than "I really screwed up. But if your hearts are truly Christian, you must just forget about it and let me keep my prestigious job just because I like it so much." Well, try that crock in your place of employment, be it IBM or the Marine Corps, and see if it works.

For the sake of fairness, it must be pointed out that Lott’s blunders pale beside the corruption and arrogance of crooked politicos who "took full responsibility" and told us that our Christian hearts had to give them a pass. But in times of hardball politics, blunders are worse than crimes, as Talleyrand cleverly remarked some two hundred years ago.

Yet, by "taking full responsibility," Trent Lott is not likely get a pass. Passes are for Democrats---Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, and others. "Taking responsibility," the code word for the price of a pass, implies a good dose of snake oil for the political squeaky wheel of the moment. That the snake oil does nothing to the squeak is irrelevant. Its purpose is temporarily to bribe current self-appointed wheel inspectors.

In this instance, the price of a pass is a submission to the exigencies of the politics of race dear to the Democrats. But the dilemma is not just Trent Lott’s. It is also that of the Republican Party, which is likely to be accused of racism for a leader’s dumb gaffe. If the party forces Lott out of his position of leadership, the accusation will persist on the ground that the move is just political expediency and not based on moral conviction. Hence, the dilemma reduces to a simple question, Lott’s fate notwithstanding: Will the Republicans, against principle, succumb to the temptation of a pass from a constituency they court? That would be a serious mistake.