Word: lott
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...Lott defined himself in a very different time and place: the Mississippi of the late 1950s and early '60s, a state infamous for its violent resistance to black equality, even as it began to offer undreamed-of opportunities to the bright children of blue-collar whites. Lott, the son of a schoolteacher and a sharecropper turned shipyard pipe fitter, not only could get loans to enter the University of Mississippi, the state's top nursery of political talent; he also joined a prestigious fraternity, Sigma...
...tidy as Clinton was sloppy, Lott dressed as crisply as a Sears-catalog model, showed up on time with his homework done and protested nothing. Neither the civil rights movement nor the Vietnam War made much of an impression on him. "I and my classmates came up in more of a positive, upbeat, 1950s kind of great time," says Lott. "We didn't think about national issues...
...Lott regards Clinton as part of a generation reared in a more "permissive" and "anti-Establishment" atmosphere. He groups Clinton in a class of such other young Democratic Governors as Ray Mabus of Mississippi and Buddy Roemer of Louisiana, who "went off to school at places like Harvard and Yale and then came back to instruct their fellow Southerners in the errors of our ways...
...part, Clinton sees Lott as the kind of Southerner who eagerly sought to join the local power structure and didn't give a damn about those who didn't enjoy the same opportunities. No one has ever accused Lott of using racist language or appeals, but Clinton looks askance at Lott's voting record: against extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; against the federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.; against a memorial for civil rights workers murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi; in favor of extending tax breaks to segregated schools. Political consultant Dick Morris, who has worked...
Democratic Senator John Breaux of Louisiana, who is also close to both Lott and Clinton, considers the majority leader a compassionate man but one who does not believe government needs to compensate for past injustices. "Trent thinks that if he could make it, anybody can" and that Washington should provide the kind of help he got through such programs as college loans instead of fostering welfare dependency, Breaux says. "Bill Clinton emphasizes that even if you started out working class, you still have to realize that some people have a harder time working their way up than you did because...