Glenn Loury makes an observation on the Trent Lott affair I haven’t heard anyone else make. While Lott was thrashing about madly in an attempt to keep his head above water, he more or less offered to make concessions on various race-related policy issues in return for support from African-Americans and those who identify with their aspirations. That offer was not merely rejected, it was mocked. That seems to Glenn to have been an unwise move, in purely interest-group terms.
That conservatives should have opposed any such deal is obvious. Lott’s stepping down was no great loss to them, and they certainly wouldn’t have wanted to see those concessions made. But why should Lott’s overtures have been rejected with such contempt by most of the black political leadership and its white allies? Was it really so much more important to punish Lott than to secure practical advantage from his misstep?
Even if his proclaimed rebirth as an anti-racist was insincere, he might still have kept whatever deal he made. Now the Republicans have cast all their racist sins onto this scapegoat, and neither he nor his party is left owing African-Americans anything.
UPDATE: A note from a reader:
One prominent black leader did take Trent seriously: Rep. John Lewis.
Lewis, whose civil rights credentials are second to none in terms of heroism, leadership, and moral integrity, accepted Lott’s apologies as sincere, and is apparently going to accompany Lott on a tour of important southern civil rights locales, supposedly in the spring.
SECOND UPDATE:
Jacob Levy thinks that making a deal for Lott’s survival would have involved a sacrifice of the moral high ground and thus been inadvisable even on practical grounds. I can see both arguments clearly, and don’t have a strong intuition about which ought to be the more convincing.