Who Can Really Say?

A stink of sorts is brewing over some comments Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) made in a speech honoring Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV).

Here's Crow Blog's quote, and comment:

Dodd said of Byrd, "You would have been a great senator at any moment....you would have been right at the founding of this country, right during the Civil War....I can't think of a single moment in this nation's 220+ year history where you would not have been a valuable asset to this country."

You sure about that, Chris? Byrd, of course, was a Klansman at one moment in the nation's history... Let's see... Senator pays tribute to aged senator, and in the midst of ass-kissing, gives his blessing to said aged senator's past racist acts. So where exactly is the mainstream press (or more than a handful of people, for that matter) on this?

The comparison, of course, is to the Trent Lott (R-MS) Affair, when Lott, in praise of the late Strom Thurmond, said:

I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.

There are two problems here. First, Lott specifically praised a point in Thurmond's career when Thurmond stood squarely for racist segregation. Dodd has done no such thing regarding Byrd. It's true that Byrd used to belong to the Klan but I'm unaware that this took place while he served in the US Senate, and Dodd was praising Byrd's overall career as a senator -- not a specific moment in that career.

Second, I think Lott got his just desserts, which was the loss of his leadership post. Dodd isn't the Senate Minority Leader as Trott was the Majority Leader. I couldn't find on quick perusal of Dodd's website any reference to party leadership posts, and his only "official" position if that's the right term is Ranking Member of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.

Dodd's comments broadly embraced Byrd's career. Byrd left the Klan in 1943 and the last documented contact seems to be in 1947. He also fillibustered Civil Rights legislation in the 1960's. (All of this from an unflatteringly Byrd portrayal by Michell Malkin.) But I don't think this rises to the level of Lott, who was the leader of his party, and who favorably referred directly to Thurmond's segregationist politics. Dodd doesn't hold that sort of leadership position (the forfeiture of which was Lott's consequence) and didn't wax on specifcally about how wonderful those Klan-Byrd moments were. It ain't the same thing.