A Lott Less Penalty For Durbin

It may be that the controversy over Illinois Democrat Senator Richard Durbin’s silly remarks regarding the Guantanamo Bay prison camp will start to fade now that he has issued his tearful apology from the Senate floor. And maybe that’s as it should be. It certainly is from the perspective of the many Washingtonian Senators who are always anxious to rid themselves by any means necessary of any issue that upsets their comfort and “collegiality” up on Capitol Hill. But if it is indeed to be a settled matter from this point on, one would hope that the public will take note of the difference between this and another controversy involving a Senator’s boneheaded comments.

I should note from the get-go that I am no fan of Trent Lott and am, quite frankly, thrilled that he is no longer the Republican Leader in the Senate. But let’s face it, when he made his remarks about Strom Thurmond at the South Carolina Senator’s one-hundredth birthday party – away from the Senate floor, mind you – no objective person could really believe that he intended to hurt anyone. He was merely trying to say something nice about an old man on his birthday, and he said the wrong thing while trying to do this. Nevertheless, his very poor choice of words did indeed hurt people, and the opposition party would not let the ensuing controversy go, despite repeated apologies from Mr. Lott, until they had convinced other Republican leaders to chase Mr. Lott from his leadership position. All this over a misunderstanding about a Senator’s poor choice of words – exactly what Senator Durbin says has happened in this case.

By contrast, Mr. Durbin will be getting off quite easily if all he has to do is say he feels bad if anyone misunderstood him and was offended by what he said – while never acknowledging that what he said was simply wrong. (Does any public official ever actually just say “I was wrong, I’m sorry” anymore?)

The fact is, most Americans who were offended by Mr. Durbin understood his remarks – obviously intended to hurt someone in the person of George W. Bush – perfectly well. The problem for him was that, in his zeal to tear down another leader of the United States, he was willing to trample on the reputation of those who serve this nation, and the memory of those who died at the hands of some of history’s truly most infamous regimes. And, unlike Senator Lott’s poor choice of words, Senator Durbin’s comparison of American servicemen to the killing squads of dictators, by virtue of his uttering them on the floor of the United States Senate, became part of the official congressional record. A fact not lost on the Arab propagandists of Al Jazeera.

Despite all this, it seems evident now that, at the end of the day, Mr. Durbin will retain his position as the number-two Democrat in the Senate, ranking below only Minority Leader Harry Reid. And, ultimately, that is the Democrats’ call to make. But if this is to be how the controversy ends, Americans might do well to take note of the contrasts between this and the 2002 Lott fiasco.

Rarely do Americans get to see how the different parties handle almost identical controversies involving their members. When they do, they should take note of how each such controversy is handled by those in both parties. The differences can be quite instructive in recognizing which party seems to truly value national unity over partisan points, and which is willing to let its rage at the opposition cloud its judgment in its evaluation of wartime policies. Thank goodness the adults are in charge right now.