By the time G.O.P. senators met last week to elect a replacement for Bob Dole as majority leader, the result was a foregone conclusion. Which is exactly how Trent Lott had planned it. After Dole's surprise announcement in May that he would resign from Congress, the second-term Senator from Mississippi with made-for-TV hair needed just one day of lobbying his colleagues to be confident of victory. "I work fast," said Lott, who also talks fast, after he swamped fellow Mississippian Thad Cochran by a vote of 44 to 8. "I probably talked to 40 Senators within 24 hours."
The son of...
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