Trent Lott: New King Of Capitol Hill

Nor is it Jack Kemp, his defeated running mate, who has no obvious political base. It certainly is not Newt Gingrich, who two years ago was saying Clinton would be very, very dumb to stand in the way of his conservative revolution. He is back as Speaker of the House, but with a reduced Republican majority and with every public opinion poll reporting there is no more disliked politician in the country.

The new king of the hill, in more ways than one, is Senator Trent Lott, the 55-year-old from Mississippi, who was beginning to make a mark as majority leader, taking over from Dole in July, even before the election strengthened his hand.

 

Now he presides over a slightly larger party edge in the Senate - gaining one seat or two, depending on the final count in Oregon.

He will not have the vital 60 seats needed to cut off filibusters, but whereas the House has become, if anything, slightly more moderate, the Senate, long the chamber of careful deliberation, has shifted to the more impatient right. Three conservative Republicans have been elected to previously Democratic seats, while three moderate Republicans have retired.

Of Tuesdays winners, four new Republican senators are all to the right of their Republican predecessors. One obvious consequence of the ideological shift would appear to be that the constitutional amendment to balance the budget by 2002, which fell short of the required two thirds majority by a single vote in 1995, would comfortably pass and Lott hinted immediately he would bring it up.

His record 16 years in the House and eight in the Senate had placed him firmly on the uncompromising Republican right. But once he took over from Dole, he demonstrated a surprising inclination to cut deals with Democrats to break the legislative logjam.

Agreements were reached to increase the minimum wage, pass the portable health insurance bill and, finally welfare reform some Republican priorities, but others pushed most strongly by Democrats. The result was that congressmen were able to seek re-election with a legislative record that looked far better than seemed likely when Dole was majority leader and trying to score points off Clinton for his presidential campaign.

Lott gets much of the credit for this. Whether the spirit of co-operation continues into the second Clinton term also in good measure depends on him. But equally as important as legislative considerations are whether he decides to use his power to pursue investigations into the many allegations of scandal surrounding Clinton and his administration.

To date, he has been diplomatic. That is not going to be our principal and primary focus, he said, implying that Whitewater and related matters should first be left to the discretion of Kenneth Starr, the special counsel.

Even more remarkably, Senator Al DAmato of New York, chief Whitewater scourge of the Clintons but beginning to gear up for his own re-election in 1998, said he was going to drop the issue.

Lott will also inevitably be drawn into the broader issue of campaign finance reform affecting both parties.

And he will be under much pressure from party members to find a way of getting at organised labour, whose advertising campaign against Republican congressional candidates created a deep well of conservative resentment.

Clinton, the other undisputed boss in Washington at the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue, might disagree with that.