Word: lotte
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...young Lott family returned to Pascagoula, where Trent practiced law. But after less than a year, the district's veteran Congressman, William Colmer, chairman of the rules committee and a staunch segregationist, offered Lott a top staff job. The family packed their belongings into a green Pontiac Bonneville and set out for Washington, as Tricia put it, "to stay a couple of years and see if we liked...
When Colmer, a Democrat, in 1972 announced his retirement from the House, Lott declared his candidacy--as a Republican--and eventually won his mentor's endorsement. Lott proved an energetic and persuasive campaigner. As he later explained to his son, "If a little old lady with a cane and a mustache asks you to kiss her, you better do it and enjoy it, or she's gonna know it." Lott lost 15 lbs. that he didn't have to lose. He sometimes lost his voice. But he won the election...
Once in washington, Lott vowed to "fight against the ever increasing efforts of the so-called liberals to concentrate more power in the government in Washington." But he voted for more federal spending on the military, farm subsidies, rural public works projects and entitlement programs. The main federal activities he opposed were taxes and programs for the poor. When supply-side economics came along, it was a special godsend to Lott: a theology that encouraged tax cuts without spending cuts, a new way to avoid hard choices...
...instance, he opposed a Reagan-sponsored tax-reform bill that would have closed certain special-interest loopholes. That same year, Lott and Congressman Jack Kemp persuaded Reagan not to support the Republican Senate's efforts to reduce the cost of living allowances for Social Security, and the measure failed in the House. Two years later, Lott joined with Democrats to override Reagan's veto of a pork-larded highway bill, explaining that he wanted some of that spending for his district. And in 1990 he opposed President Bush over a deficit-reduction package that included both spending cuts...
...Lott's rationale for his new low-risk behavior cleverly marries today's mechanistic, poll-driven politics to an older philosophy that politicians shouldn't get too far in front of their constituents. Whenever a legislator votes differently from an informed majority of his constituents--as measured by Dick Morris or some other pollster--"your constituents are usually right," Lott says, "and you are wrong...