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Home , Abraham Ribicoff, Chuck Schumer, Judd Gregg, Max Baucus, Mike Mansfield, Roll Call

COVER STORY || INSIDE THE SENATE THE LOST SENATE If senators can't get along, how can they govern?

hirty years ago this fall, was running for president, ruled the Senate floor as and a boyish had already jumped ahead of his freshman class by securing a seat on the powerful Finance Committee. At West Point, Army Capt. Jack Reed resigned his commission to enter THarvard Law School. In , state Assemblyman , Flatbush’s version of a young Lyndon Johnson, prepared to run for the House. And in Louisville, Ky., Jefferson County Judge Mitch McConnell waited — consolidating power, speaking around the state, but always with an eye toward the Senate, where he had interned for his hero, Sen. Cooper (R-Ky.), during the great civil rights debate of 1964. “That was when I first decided to try,” McConnell says. Change is a great constant in Congress: One generation is forever giving way to the next. But to look back 30 years at the Senate — when this reporter first came to Washington — is to see the last remnant of something now lost from American government.

By Rogers John shinkle — P OLI T I C O 54 politico 53 In 1979, a solid quarter of the senators had lived through the civil rights debate that elected senator — after years in the much larger House. so inspired McConnell. And in them, elements of the old Senate “club” still endured. Only a single row of lights was turned on in the ceiling — the Senate was not in Television had yet to intrude, preserving a greater intimacy and drawing senators session — and the Texan stood at the door, taking in the polished wooden desks to the floor to hear one another’s speeches. Rather than cover the Senate from TV arranged in ascending curved rows. Jenkins recalls his boss muttering as if talking screens, reporters were literally in the room, watching from galleries with a wider, to himself; the exact words were lost, but the gist was this: The Senate was “the right more personal view of the protagonists below. size.” Among the senators themselves, there were fewer former House members than Indeed, Johnson saw what makes the Senate most unique: just 100 men and women today; there were many more former governors and more state delegations where to help govern a nation that today totals more than 300 million. a Democrat held one seat and a Republican held the other. The Capitol’s old Styles The Texan’s domineering personality would turn this small arena into a center of Bridges dining room — now often empty — was a gathering place for both creativity and ingenuity — the likes of which Caro says the Senate has not seen since. parties. When dusk fell, bourbon came out in the offices of Southern senators, timed But the lasting lesson for members today is that to function, this intimacy requires to the evening call of the whippoorwill back home. trust and personal ties. Byrd, standing center stage, had come up through the House, where his classmate Senate rules give immense power to the minority but always with the assumption Tip O’Neill was now speaker. But with his white hair combed back and puffed up, that relations among the members will smooth the way. Instead, the past 30 years have the proud West Virginian was every inch the Senate man — with the House long put witnessed a growing alienation among senators, compounded by the polarization of behind him. American politics and the media. O’Neill met with reporters every day before the House opened; Byrd held a weekly In an interview with POLITICO, Caro recalls the view from the galleries in the old news conference — on Saturdays, to maximize the impact on the Sunday papers. And Senate — and changes since. when swept into power in the 1980 election, Byrd resisted calls to don “It was dimly lit, and with its old-fashioned desks, it was evocative of an age when formalwear for the Inauguration ceremonies. The coal miner’s son kept to a business senators discussed issues back and forth at the desks, speaking to each other,” he suit; O’Neill, to the amusement of Kennedy, obliged Reagan with the help of a Boston says. “It was an age — a long age, more than a century long — in which votes were tailor and a size “52 stout” pair of striped pants and changed by arguments on the floor, and it was more gray cutaways. conducive to thoughtfulness. Today’s Senate is a world apart. “The senators were speaking to each other, not Kennedy died in August, leaving a gaping hole in to a television camera. Today they’re not talking to the chamber. Byrd is so weakened by age that he one another but to the outside world. In fact, it’s not couldn’t stand to deliver his floor tribute to his close an intimate place or the ‘right size’ anymore.” friend and onetime rival. How did this happen? From his second-floor Capitol office, McConnell , the Republican who has grown into the implacable master of a new led the Senate in the early ’80s and helped bring regime of bloodless, 60-vote protocols — rather than television to the chamber, has long joked that the the old-style filibuster he witnessed as an intern. airplane and air conditioning were already the ruin And Schumer, the relentless campaign director who of the old ways. One machine pulled senators away brought his Democrats back to power, embodies a from one another; the other took away the pressure new version of the old senatorial club: the political on senators to get their work done and escape party as family. Washington’s sweltering summers. Caught in the middle is Baucus, the graying “The airplane has liberated members from Finance chairman in the wheelhouse of health care Washington,” Daschle agrees. “It allows them to reform heading to the Senate floor. As a young man leave their families in their home states and work fresh from ’s , he beat the what’s a Tuesday-through-Thursday schedule. In old club at its own game, winning a seat on Finance the old days, you hung around weekends. Now you that had been designated for oil-rich Oklahoma. can make commitments to visit every county in Now at the peak of his power, Baucus must ride your state.” a roller-coaster debate devoid of the cooperation Lost are the car pools, weekend parties and that helped the Senate forge victories on civil rights potluck dinners that brought senators together. under Mansfield’s leadership. Republican shared rides to the “People say the Senate is a club. The Senate Capitol with Maine Democrat . couldn’t be further removed from a club today,” Kennedy’s new memoirs tell of his children coming former Senate Majority Leader of to his office and to family picnics. Time and again, tells POLITICO. “Because we can’t when Southerners speak of what were surprisingly bond, we can’t trust. Because we can’t trust, we can’t close relations with the late Sen. cooperate. Because we can’t cooperate, we become ibrary of c ongress L ibrary — a Northeastern Jewish Democrat — the dysfunctional.” Then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson conversations come back to Ribicoff’s wife, Casey. “It’s a different time,” says Sen. Judd Gregg “I liked him. I liked Casey,” recalls former (R-N.H.), who will retire next year. “I don’t think there’s any question that it has Sen. (R-Kan.), who worked with Ribicoff on health issues on the Senate transitioned from being a place where people had an affinity for each other that was Finance Committee. “He was partisan, but he wasn’t biting anybody. It wasn’t a biting personal to a place where people are basically involved in doing a job, come to work, partisanship. ... And Casey just would kind of light up the room.” and these are the folks they work with.” Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) packed up his whole family on the Lincoln’s Birthday All is not lost. Much about that old Senate club was racist and capable of being holiday in 1977. “We made a family choice that all six of us would come,” he recalls. immensely cruel. The chamber’s doors are far more open today to women and But with the rush of more former House members — who have adjusted to keeping minorities, and small state delegations like ’s have kept alive the best their families at home — this is a rarity now in the Senate. traditions of the old. “They didn’t change their lifestyle,” Lugar says of House members-turned-senators. Reed, the West Pointer, soon to be 60 and in his third term, has blossomed into one “They just changed the room.” of the Senate’s most respected members, smoothing the path for his younger partner, The Senate gym and congressional delegations overseas are among the last meeting freshman Sen. . Five-foot-7 “in the right atmospheric conditions,” places. More often, the pattern is all-of-one-party, male nighttime socializing, in which the former Army Ranger delights in a framed 1950s photo of LBJ towering over another arrivals from the House mix with their old House colleagues rather than with senators diminutive Rhode Islander: 90-year-old Sen. Theodore Greene. across the aisle. “He is the consummate senator,” says retired Sen. (R-Neb.), a friend Schumer and Senate Majority (D-Ill.) — two potential rivals if of Reed’s. “He is never petty, always seeking the high ground.” Majority Leader should fall next year in Nevada — still share rooms with That lesson applies to the full Senate. If it is to work again, it also must seek that House friends. Sens. of North Carolina and Saxby Chambliss of high ground, that lost personal side, so vital as a breakwater against the political are leaders of an all-Republican, all-former-House dinner network that frequently forces outside. includes House (R-Ohio). “A personal relationship is what allows you to go after someone hammer and tongs “A blast e-mail goes out in the afternoon saying where we will be,” Burr said with a on one issue and still find common ground on the next,” Vice President said smile. Monday nights belong to Fox’s “24,” and the exploits of counterterrorist agent in his farewell to the Senate in January. “It is the grease that lubricates this incredible Jack Bauer, at the Club. There are favorite Eighth Street restaurants — system we have.” allowing smoking outside. Each invites the others to his fundraisers, and by Thursday One who knew this best was Lyndon Johnson. In “Master of the Senate,” Pulitzer evening, most hope to be flying home. Prize-winning historian Robert A. Caro describes the future majority leader going to Richard Baker, who recently retired as the Senate historian, wonders whether it In 1789, President George Washington the Capitol with his aide Walter Jenkins to view the chamber for the first time as an has all led “to a different kind of senator — a senator who is more hale and hardy and ➤ requested a room "for the joint business of the president and the Senate." In the 1850s, the President's Room was built.

54 politico John shinkle — P OLI T I C O politico 53 INSIDE THE SENATE

who can jump on an airplane and have all that air travel on a weekly basis.” The numbers suggest that it has. Former House members, accustomed to this life, now account for nearly half the Senate. More important is how far they have outpaced former governors, who were a substantial force 30 years ago. In 1979, there were roughly two former governors for every three former House members; today the ratio is closer to one former for every five former House members. “That’s a loss, because governors have to deal with all sides and are accustomed to having to figure out how to bring people together,” says former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.). “House members from safe districts are more ideological and bring that attitude with them to the Senate.” Even as the Senate’s social bonds have frayed, outside political pressures have greatly increased on those getting on that plane for Washington. Reagan’s landslide in 1980 built on — and magnified — a growing ideological split in American politics. In the 30 years prior to 1979, power in the Senate had changed twice; in the 30 years since, control has shifted six times. The ’90s saw the sharp-edged style of House Speaker (R-Ga.) spill into the Senate, as more of his “revolutionaries” crossed the Capitol. A polarizing media — cable television, the , talk radio — encouraged confrontation. “It is a place where there is less civility, good manners showing most of the time,” says Sen. (R-Miss.). And as broke into red and blue states, so did the Senate. Today there are 13 fewer bipartisan state delegations than there were 30 years ago. “I used to get too much credit or blame for working with the Democrats,” Baker recalls. “And I would tell people if you grew up in Tennessee, you’d better get along with Democrats. But that’s changed. The parties are not geographically abutting one another as much as they did in the past.” Political scientists often speak of three models or types of senators. First is “the club” — most identified with William White’s “Citadel” or Southern bulls like Georgia’s Richard Russell. “We looked like people assembling at a morticians’ conference,” says Sen. (D-), who arrived as a freshman in 1963 to find a sea of black and gray three-piece suits. Inouye had to wait more than two months to give his “maiden” speech, but when he did, 25 senators — a packed house by today’s standards — were there to hear him, including Russell. Second — following civil rights, and Watergate — came a more individualistic Senate that rejected the dominance of the old order. Former Sen. (D-N.J.), a brainy basketball star with a famous name, fit this mold: attractive to the media and often an irritant for party leaders. But as staff and committee assignments increased, the Senate also came to resemble 100 unwieldy nation- states. Or as Lugar famously once said: 100 carrier task forces steaming down the hall. Third is today’s Senate, a forum for permanent campaigns: the senator as partisan warrior — or even hunter. The Founding Fathers gave the Senate six-year terms as a breather for governing: Washington’s cooling saucer. But this window has closed as senators cope with fundraising and a growing fear of party activists demanding a primary challenger. With a third of the Senate up for election every two years — and power so narrowly divided — political parties drive the show. It’s almost as if the once individualistic senators have felt compelled to regroup — not as a club this time but more as a political gang. “It is much more connected to the world outside the Senate than the old club was,” says Thomas Mann, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution. “It’s hard for the Senate to maintain the feeling of being a special place when what it’s mainly doing is reflecting broader forces in the society.” Old customs of senators not campaigning for a colleague's opponent have collapsed, leaving a residue of bad feelings. “How can you trust one another after saying some of the things that get said in campaigns?” Nunn asks. But the real explosion may be more inside the parties themselves. “The people who come to the Senate may not have started out this way, may not be the fire-in-the-belly type, out to kill each other,” Lugar says. “But they know where their base is and how far they can go before they run into somebody who is already promoting a primary candidate, even if they have a six-year term and [are] into it only one year. They better watch out.” ➤ This polarization has helped turned the filibuster into an almost ➤ Former Sens. and Tom Daschle and Sens. Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid 54 politico politico John shinkle — P OLI T I C O 53 COVER STORY || INSIDE THE SENATE COVER STORY || INSIDE THE SENATE

unchecked demand for 60 votes on any question. In 1979, there were four “I started a leg up ’cause of him,” says Whitehouse, who arrived two years ago and has votes; this year, there already have been more than five times that number. enjoyed something of a charmed existence since — beginning with a back-row Senate This isn’t Frank Capra’s Jimmy Stewart demanding to be heard for a cause. There desk near Kennedy’s bearing the marks of two Rhode Island predecessors, Sens. John still are moments when an individual senator will make a stand. But as a rule, these Pastore and , who served more than 60 years between them. are matter-of-fact partisan blocking forces in which the 60-vote threshold is negotiated “Carved in the drawer in great big letters: PASTORE. Beneath that, in tiny little by leaders off the floor. letters: Pell, dash, R.I.,” Whitehouse says. “Can you believe it? Like there was going to “What has evolved here is a kind of understanding that since any one senator can be some question?” put us in a 60-vote situation, you agree to have the vote at a 60-vote threshold,” says Raised as a “Foreign Service brat” and with a seat now on the Intelligence Committee, McConnell, who cites this change as the most clear-cut in his 25 years. “I’m not making a Whitehouse isn’t shy about taking trips overseas — helping him meet Republicans like value judgment about it at all. Particularly when sitting on 40 senators, I kind of like it.” Cochran. The delayed seating of Sen. (D-Minn.) created an opening for Senate rules are less the driver than is a greater ruthlessness in applying them — him this summer to fill in — and shine — on Kennedy’s Health, Education, Labor and even to executive nominations and judgeships. Pensions Committee, where Whitehouse’s state experience with health insurance was No single starting point can be isolated. In the late ’80s, Senate Majority Leader an asset. George Mitchell (D-Maine) — agitated by the delaying tactics of then-Minority Leader “People ask about Ted Kennedy being gone and who replaces him,” Mann says. “I Dole — was already ordering up reports on filibusters. Lugar points to 2001, when said, ‘No one, ever’ — just give him that uniqueness. But if I had to name someone who Republicans suddenly lost power because one of their own, Sen. , is promising if he sticks around the Senate, it would be Whitehouse.” switched parties in a 50-50 Senate. McConnell and Schumer are two warring personalities — poles apart, each a “Republicans said, ‘We’re not going to be cheated by this strange quirk,’” Lugar former campaign chairman for his colleagues — who will have a great say about the recalls. “‘For things to go forward, you’re going to need 60 votes.’” Senate’s direction. Democrats did the same when power shifted against them in 2003, and the race A student of history, the often wooden Republican leader is not immune to the was on. The goal became not just to obstruct but to test nongermane amendments — personal: The same Cooper who brought him to Washington was a Kennedy family targeted at vulnerable members up for election. friend, and McConnell was eloquent in his tribute to the Democrat last “You hear it on the floor. Is this a 60-vote vote or a 50-vote vote?” says Armed Services month. Committee Chairman (D-Mich.). “It’s gotten to the point where it’s almost But in an interview, McConnell is surprisingly defensive, even disdainful about up to the proponent. The Senate’s got to force people at some point to filibuster. That past Senates. “To assume that because everybody was well-oiled and having a good automatic 60-vote approach maximizes time, that was necessarily better the factions within the Democratic or for the country, I just don’t grant Republican Party.” the premise,” he says sharply. For “I don’t want to take credit for McConnell, the Senate remains largely it,” says Dole, who believes the net unchanged from what it was 200 years impact has been bad for the Senate ago: “a place where things slow down, and confusing to the public. “I think we consensus has to be built.” did some of it. Both sides did,” he says, “The problem about having principle chuckling at McConnell’s saying he is it does frequently make it harder to likes the supermajority threshold. “Oh compromise,” he says. “I think you yes, if you’re in the minority, you’d like have a whole lot more people on both 70 votes [for cloture]. I stopped at 60.” sides who deeply believe in something, Barbara Sinclair, a University of who are tough competitors.” California political scientist, says Schumer accents the personal in enough remains of the old individualistic an almost smothering fashion — as Senate — Budget Committee Chairman if blind to the gap between his Senate (D-N.D.) is one example “family,” the Democratic and — that it is “the worst of both worlds” the institution itself. for any majority leader. Even routine Now almost 59, he is considerably appropriations bills are to pass, older than Johnson was in his Senate and “you have a Senate that really just years, but among modern senators, the

manages to not step over the precipice A P New Yorker comes closest to the Texan into total breakdown,” she says. Former Sen. Mike Mansfield and Sen. Daniel Inouye in his voracious political appetites and “Sometimes you think it could happen domineering style. To be “Schumered” anytime.” is a not-so-flattering verb used by the New Yorker’s colleagues. Yet many also owe him Mann adds: “Campaigns are war, and in a war, you try to defeat your enemies. and respond to his pleas, such as an August in which he swung votes to deliver But in our constitutional system, you really need something beyond war to govern a victory — far from Brooklyn — for upstate dairy workers. effectively.” Asked about Johnson, Schumer shies away but agrees: “Yes, the Senate is a better How to do that? size, no question.” And like the Texan, he invokes family images: Kennedy was “like a Baker has long argued that Senate leaders should be empowered to compel members father,” he says, and Schumer himself, the loving, all-controlling, nudge brother. to come to the floor to expedite and enliven debate. Fewer preset speeches should be “I really like my colleagues. I know about them; I care about them. That’s true of a permitted, and, like members of the British Parliament, senators would not be allowed whole lot of senators. ... When I’m not here, I talk to three or four of my colleagues a to use prepared remarks or lean heavily on their staff when engaged on the floor. day. Sometimes it’s about business. Sometimes it’s not. But there’s always a personal Others just want the parties to have breakfast together now and then — something element there.” Mansfield and Vermont Republican Sen. did naturally years ago. Under television’s lights — something Johnson didn’t have to contend with — Tennessee Sen. , the Republican whip and a Baker protégé, hosts Schumer has had to learn to curb his excessive style. And after four years as the such a Dutch-treat group with Sen. (I-Conn.). Tables are arranged in a family’s chief partisan, he knows he also must become more of a leader for the square, with alternative D and R place cards. institution — and address Republican resentments. “I didn’t like angering them, but I A ubiquitous ambassador-of-one, Sen. (R-S.C.) has set about self- had to do my job,” he insists. consciously to try to expand his “comfort zone” — and that of others. “I’m trying McConnell, who felt the heat of a Schumer-run challenge last year, won’t soon get to know the people of my generation better,” he says. “I do think the more you forget or forgive. But when the Senate honored former Republican leader Trent Lott of know someone, the more interaction you have at the personal level, it becomes more last month, Schumer surprised some by coming. He chats up Republicans difficult to demagogue them.” at the gym and has big ambitions for a bipartisan immigration reform bill next Delegations from small or less populous states — under the national political year. His new Rules Committee chairmanship is an asset, allowing him to dispense radar — can be leaders. Republicans from and , or Graham from South housekeeping favors to members of both parties and work on election reforms with a Carolina, have been willing to stretch themselves. Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, the son man he almost drove out of the Senate last year: Georgia’s Chambliss. of former Sen. David Pryor, is a potential coalition builder among Democrats. It was an especially bitter fight, since Democrats forced Chambliss into a costly Rhode Island’s Reed stands out most, leading by his quiet example. In his 12 years, runoff after attacking him for taking money and then voting for the he has established an extraordinary committee base affecting domestic and defense financial markets bailout — exactly how Schumer voted after taking Wall Street policy; with the U.S. at a crossroads in Afghanistan, the West Pointer is someone money himself. listened to by the president’s civilian advisers — and by generals. “You don’t forget elections, but you have to put them behind you,” says Chambliss. “You have to work hard at being substantive,” he says. “Sometimes substantive “He was very easy to work with.” analysis can mean you take a position that is partisan but it is not a reaction to the “I’m not, by nature, that partisan,” Schumer insists. “I’m a get-things-done guy.” focus of the moment or what the message of the day is.” Then he adds, “In that way, I admire Lyndon Johnson.”

54 politico John shinkle — P OLI T I C O politico 53