The Pickering fallout

By Staff
March 24, 2002
We have reprinted the editorial below from the Tuesday edition of The Washington Post, as if our readers needed enlightening in the Pickering affair, with the advance stipulation that we disagree with it up and down the line. The Post is one of America's great newspapers, but the pseudo-psychologists there don't know Judge Charles Pickering. We do. They evidently look at Sen. Lott as some sort of Southern rouge when the national Democrats wrote the book on "acts of petty destructiveness."
Lott is well within his authority as a member of the Senate to endorse, delay, accelerate, obstruct or cause to be withdrawn the nomination of any person he finds unsuitable for appointive office. If it involves one of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's aides and the Federal Communications Commission, so much the better. Making it tough on your political enemies is a grand Senate tradition that should hold for conservative Republicans as well as for liberal Democrats. As for "parliamentary choke points," the acknowledged master is Sen. Robert Byrd, a Democrat of West Virginia.
The Senate's most "important work" should be to stimulate the economy and ensure that no American involuntarily pays more than his fair share of taxes. Under the Democratic majority, the mission has failed.
We do share The Post's regrets that Sen. Jim Jeffords, a Republican-turned-Democrat who sang with Lott in the "Singing Senators" quartet, defected. He had a fine voice.
Sen. Lott's retribution
Judging from the way Trent Lott lashed out following the Judiciary Committee's rejection of his friend and fellow Mississippian, U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering, as a nominee to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, it may be, as they say in the helping professions, that the senator has some anger issues to address. Within hours of Judge Pickering's party-line defeat, Sen. Lott moved to block a $1.5 million request by the committee to conduct a probe related to Sept. 11 miscues, obstructed the nomination of an aide to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to the Federal Communications Commission, and signaled that there may be more parliamentary choke points where those came from: "You'll see it in a lot of ways and in a lot of days," warned Sen. Lott. He is clearly behaving as a victim done wrong. That is a worrisome mind-set because, as minority leader, Mr. Lott's current impulsive, negative method of dealing with his anger could disrupt the Senate's important work.
This isn't to say Mr. Lott doesn't have some cause to be a bit touchy these days. The past 10 months haven't been exactly peachy. The Pickering debacle is only the latest in a string of personal reversals that could leave even the most self-confident legislator feeling a bit unappreciated. First of all, last May Jim Jeffords, Mr. Lott's good friend and a fellow crooner in the "Singing Senators" quartet, defected from the Republican Party, giving Democrats a majority and costing Mr. Lott the best job he ever had as the Senate's powerful leader. Next, Sen. Lott had to watch as his Mississippi friend and ally, Curt Hebert, resigned from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission because of disagreements with the Bush administration's stance on energy deregulation. That was followed by the recent ouster of Mike Parker, another Trent Lott friend and Mississippian, as civilian head of the Army Corps of Engineers. Now, on the heels of Mr. Parker's forced resignation, the Senate's top Republican finds himself unable even to deliver the goods for a longtime friend and a home state judge who probably would not have been nominated by President Bush were it not for Sen. Lott's sponsorship and strong backing. Judge Pickering, a jurist of slim talents, should have been refused a seat on the appeals court. But his rejection must be especially hard for Sen. Lott to swallow.
Is that cause, however, for a senior senator to become passive- (or not-so-passive-) aggressive, striking out at his perceived enemies indirectly through acts of petty destructiveness? Sen. Lott's irrational response is only going to escalate an already unhealthy political climate in the Senate. The senator should do some deep breathing and consider the possibility that no one is out to get him, that Mississippi can do better than Judge Pickering, and that even as minority leader, he's still got a job that keeps him out of the sun.
The Washington Post