And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN, the Axviles with your

host, David Axelrod.

If you were to create a character for a film from central casting of the old Southern

Senator, the old Southern politician, you'd probably come up with Trent Lot, who's a

garyllis storytelling dealmaker and served Mississippi for three decades as in the House

and the Senate and then was the Senate Majority Leader.

Today, he'd be the poster child in the Republican Party for the Establishment Republican.

He and Senator Tom Dashill, his counterpart as Democratic Leader in his years in the Senate,

just wrote a book called Crisis Point about gridlock in Washington and what we do about it.

And when I sat down with him the other day, he had many thoughts on the presidential race,

on the Supreme Court battle, and how we fix our politics.

This episode of the Axviles is brought to you by Stamps.com.

Senator Trent Lot, you grew up around politics, didn't you?

You?

I read somewhere that both grandfather's were political office holders back in Mississippi.

What do you remember of that?

My grandfather Lot was a supervisor, county supervisor, and Stan, he even was president

of the Mississippi Boards of Supervisors.

And then my mother's father, Ed Watson, was a Justice of the Peace.

And he rode the circuit on a horse, having, you know, holding court.

He carried a 38-pistol, a lemon squeezer and a holster.

He could reach in under his coat and administer the gun.

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