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What Plot Got Lott?
By David R. Zukerman, NYC and Winsted
Some weeks back, I sent a letter to Thomas Schlamme, one of the top people at The West Wing—hoping to get the show to include a reference to Federalist 57. The letter was returned, apparently unopened. It is not clear if they feared anthrax or a possible lawsuit by a disgruntled viewer whose idea was used by the show. (Heavens, Federalist 57 is in the public domain. Oh well.)
Although I have no inside information on the plot that got Lott, here is a scenario for how the Not-Lott Plot might be treated on The West Wing. (Please allow for the need to alter party references, because of the context of this popular NBC series.)
President Bartlet has a Democratic majority in the Senate, and would like to see a new face as his party's leader in the Senate—a face more congenial to the Bartlet agenda. The day before President Bartlet fires his treasury secretary, the present Democratic leader in the Senate declares that the 100th birthday of a Republican senator (modeled on Strom Thurmond) should be a day of national mourning, not celebration.
There is no immediate outcry, but a few days later there is an uproar on the editorial pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe and Hartford Courant—and also in the Republican-American (an exception in the media's conservative minority)—questioning the Democratic leader's fitness to work with Republicans, impatient that he would dredge up the past rather than look forward.
With the furor gathering momentum on the radio talk shows and Sunday TV programs, the media completely forgets about the potentially newsworthy changes in President Bartlet's economics team. Polls report that if the Senate leader is not replaced, President Bartlet might lose the next election. The pollster is immediately fired, too, as President Bartlet is in his second term and cannot seek re-election (unless the Constitution is amended, or ripped up).
Bartlet aides speak off the record with reporters, suggesting that Republicans would actually prefer that the Democratic leader hold his position, as they can use him to symbolize unfair and mean-spirited Democratic partisanship. Before the episode ends, the Bartlet choice as Democratic leader is put forward by another senator close to the Bartlet camp. The old leader announces that he will step aside and we learn that after a few months he will be named to succeed Jack Valenti as head of the Motion Picture Association. (The alternative—a regular slot on a network series—was, of course, pre-empted in real life with the addition of U.S. Senator Fred Dalton Thompson to the cast of Law & Order.)
Of course, any similarity between the scenario here set forth and real persons and events is purely coincidental.
The (real-life) cover story on Senator Lott in the December 23 edition of Time magazine does not, so far as I can tell, mention that Dick Morris, a political advisor to President Clinton, had earlier worked as a political consultant to Senator Lott. Time also didn’t report that "Trent" is the senator’s middle name (his first name is "Chester"), and that the name was chosen because his mother liked the radio soap of the 1940s and '50s, The Romance of Helen Trent.
Continuing along the lines of politicians who got their names from popular entertainment figures, I have also learned by reading his memoir Passion for Truth that Senator Arlen Specter got his first name from an aunt who liked the movie actor Richard Arlen. Thus "Arlen" won out over "Abraham," the name his parents had been considering.
By the way, the working title of the television variation of my Not-Lott Story … (At this point my IBM Selectric II broke down in protest; I guess it could not abide my windup—but here it goes, anyway) … is 15 Days in December. It would mention anti-Lottsters David Brooks and William Kristol, and regret that they are not married to Brooke Shields and Crystal Gale, respectively. Happy 2003, everybody!
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