27430 | ew Friends and N
Old Enemies
T
osuhe t RpRise of MAny, cerebral Slade Gorton and Trent Lott, a
former Ole Miss cheerleader who loved to boom “The Old Rugged
Cross,” bonded quickly. Lott had been in Congress since 1973, as-
cending to House GOP whip before capturing the Senate seat left open by
the retirement in 1988 of the venerable John C. Stennis in increasingly
Republican Mississippi. Gorton’s status as a former senator put him one
rung higher on the seniority ladder when they took office in 1989. They
ended up sitting next to one another on the Armed Services and Com-
merce committees and became fast friends.
They were antsy. Despite Bush’s
decisive victory over Dukakis, Dem-
ocrats had retained control of both
houses of the 101st Congress. Gorton
was not used to being in the minor-
ity and Lott’s greatest ambition was
to lead a majority, although he was
nowhere near as single-mindedly
crafty as his fellow movement con-
servative, Georgia Congressman
Newt Gingrich.
“A lot of senators don’t take the
time to read the language in legisla-
tion or understand it if they read it,”
Lott says. “It’s strictly a political or a
visceral judgment. Slade actually
understood the substance. I had to
shake my head at the reputation he
had in some circles as an uber-par-
tisan because that’s not the kind of
Majority Leader Trent Lott, Gorton’s
good friend. Library of Congress