For Trent Lott to step down from senate leadership became necessary, but it didn't start that way. Trent Lott made an exceedingly foolish remark at the Senate retirement of Strom Thurmond from which he could have recovered by an honest disclaimer, but he allowed the news media a spectacle and the Democrats a golden political opportunity.

As if you didn't know already, Lott referred to Thurmond's 1948 try for the presidency under the erstwhile Dixiecrat party. He said they in Mississippi, which he represents in the Senate as a Republican, voted for Thurmond enthusiastically. Then he added the gratuitous observation: "And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

Everyone present understood this in context as being a general reference and sentimental hyperbole not to be taken literally or even seriously. At retirements you say whatever nice thing you can about the person being honored and you carefully avoid all the bad things that should be said in a different context. That everyone present understood this -- however many must have privately grimaced -- is evident from the fact none said anything much about it. Certainly, no one went public or called him to account publicly.

The remark lay dormant for almost a week until one of these internet blogs posted it, and it was spread by others. Once such unofficial news sources scooped them, the establish media had to get their piece of the action. When early releases simply reported it as news, the second wave had to best it with something more spectacular.

And, of course, someone went running to Al Gore and he said the predictable thing. The first thing an envious Democrat would think of: Resign! But Lott wasn't president of the senate, just majority leader-elect. Gore had no standing to make the demand, just (at that moment) political ambition.However, Lott can't put the blame for his fall anywhere but on himself, and he has indeed owned up to his own fault -- eventually. He finally acknowledged it was a dumb thing to say.

Now, what he did not say is that he currently supports segregation, the major plank of Thurmond's ill-conceived candidacy. He did back then as a young man and was seriously wrong, to be sure, but he obviously abandoned that position a long time ago. He should immediately have said he did not include segregation among "all these problems." To dispel the possibility of any misunderstanding, he should have added both a clear renewal of his own renunciation of segregation along with a strong statement of support of current toleration.

The media is to be faulted for misreporting the statement and incident. I heard and read many places such as "racial remark" rather than "what seems to some to be…" Rather than carefully reporting "…what some have taken to support segregation," I read "for supporting segregation." Trent Lott simply did not say this, and there is no way he could have meant it.

However, he brushed the whole thing aside as of little political significance, and this seems to be not simply rhetorical carelessness but downright arrogance. He didn't even wake up with the initial challenge --or the second. He parceled out increments of weak acknowledgements. An office holder with no more political savvy than this becomes a liability to his party. Stepping aside was the only thing Trent Lott left for himself.

A good deal of disingenuousness came from the Democrat camp, however, in excusing the offensive remarks at the Paul Wellstone rally as sentimentality but not allowing this for a Republican.

When any of us makes a stupid statement, we need immediately to admit it flat out, apologize convincingly, and then move on the better person for it. The rest of us need to help a fellow up and not kick him when he is down just because it's fun or makes us look a little better.

Dr. Wallace Alcorn’s commentaries appear in the Herald on Mondays.