True Compass (53 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Senator

2000-2008

In 1947, shortly after Jack was sworn in to Congress for the first time, he gave me a tour of Capitol Hill. I was nearly fifteen, and right then was when I first felt a physical love of the place, the columns and corridors and canvases. At the end of our tour, Jack gave me advice that has stayed with me to this day:

"You've just seen all the buildings that symbolize what is important about this country. But remember that it isn't just the buildings. It's what happens inside the buildings that matters."

To say that I love the Senate does not begin to convey what that institution means to me. Let me put it this way: after nearly half a century, I still cannot be in a car, headed for the Capitol, especially in the evening, and glimpse it in the distance without the hair standing up on my arms. I've told Vicki: if ever that sight does not move me, I will know it is time to step aside.

That building symbolizes to me the benevolent power and the majesty of our government. It is awesome to me: not "awesome" in the reflexive way that young people use the word, but in its real sense, its older sense, as evoking reverence.

Being a senator changes a person. Something fundamental and profound happens to you when you arrive there, and it stays with you all the time that you are privileged to serve. I have seen the changes in people who have come into the Senate. It may take a year, or two years, or three years, but it always happens: it fills you with a heightened sense of purpose.

I'm not alone in those sentiments. I remember visiting Senator Russell Long in his cavernous office shortly after I heard he planned to retire. Like me, he had become a senator at age thirty, and he represented Louisiana for thirty-nine years. He told me that he had counted on his cousin Congressman Gillis Long to tell him when to quit, because he'd seen other senators who had hung on too long. But Gillis was dead, so he had decided on his own.

"Well, Russell," I said, "a few hours ago one of the real pillars that hold up that building over there disappeared from underneath the structure."

"Kennedy," he responded, "let me tell you how long it will take for another pillar to spring right up. It doesn't take long with these younger fellows." He added, "Once in a while around here, you do something that you believe in--that's right." For Long, it was supporting the Panama Canal Treaty against strong opposition.

That desire to do the right thing, to serve the national interest, is inspired by the surroundings. I've studied the great architecture of government buildings and memorials in France, in Germany, in Great Britain, and other nations. Our Capitol is unique in the world in its design. It is a presence at once historic and alive in the moment.

As a senator, you move past the impact of the building itself. But you never move very far past it. You cannot go from one room to another--and there are so many rooms--without expecting to see something new or different, even in the familiar.

Take the paintings, for example; the magnificent paintings. I paint a little myself, as I've mentioned, and so perhaps I am more moved, and humbled, by their richness. I think of those big, sweeping, elegant canvases of John Trumbull that hang in the Rotunda:
Declaration of Independence
,
Surrender of General Burgoyne
,
Surrender of Lord Cornwallis
, and
General George Washington Resigning His Commission
. Trumbull was a Harvard man and an aide to Washington in the Revolutionary War; he witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill. Those oils are the most dramatic paintings in the Capitol. They have hung there since 1826. And of course there are those towering murals and frescoes and portraits by Constantino Brumidi. Brumidi was Italian, but when he arrived in the United States in 1852 at age forty-seven, he made himself one of us by declaring, "My ambition and my daily prayer is that I may live long enough to make beautiful the Capitol of the one country on earth in which there is liberty." Which he did, over twenty-seven years of constant work. His fresco
Apotheosis of George Washington
graces the Rotunda along with the Trumbulls, and his paintings flow through many rooms and hallways, most notably the famous "Brumidi corridor."

Even the Senate desks hold great meaning. A lot of these mahogany desks, forty-eight of them, I believe, date to 1819: the Senate bought them that year as part of the restoration after the British set the Capitol afire during the War of 1812. My desk is the one that Jack sat in when he was in the Senate. Barack Obama sat in Bobby's old desk when he was a senator. Daniel Webster's old desk is always reserved for the senior senator from New Hampshire, Webster's native state.

Then there's the tradition of scratching our names into the wood on the bottoms of our desk drawers, to chronicle which senator held which desk down through the years. This custom dates only to the early 1900s. Jack did this, and I did it, and Bobby did it.

Finally, we have the tradition of the "candy desk." In the late 1960s, Senator George Murphy of California had a desk on the back row on the Republican side of the chamber. We all knew that George had a sweet tooth and kept candy in his desk drawer. Senators had to pass by his desk to walk on and off the floor and would often reach into his desk drawer for candy. It quickly became a tradition that whoever occupied that desk inherited the responsibility of keeping its drawer well stocked with candy. As I write this, Senator Mel Martinez of Florida sits at the candy desk and maintains its supply of sweets.

Sometime later, Democratic senators began their own candy desk tradition. It's the Democratic Secretary's desk--a beautiful old rolltop desk in a corner of the Senate chamber. Senators contribute to a candy fund to keep that desk supplied, too.

I love spending time in the Russell Senate Office Building, known before 1972 as the Old Senate Office Building. It's a fine old Beaux-Arts structure that was finished in 1908. Being inside it gives you a marvelous sense of closeness to its history. You walk into that old building and it takes your breath away. You stand up straighter. The architecture is such that you can speak in its rotunda and hear your voice echoing back perfectly. In fact, in the Senate chamber, even if you haven't got a booming voice, you can still be heard just about all through that building.

Senators and their families used to have picnics on the grounds back in the 1960s and '70s. A number of us had young children at that time, and we'd sit out on the lawn with them and enjoy the evening. There's a lantern atop the dome of the Capitol that stays lit as long as either the House or Senate is in session. Also, the American flag stays raised over the Senate chamber as long as the Senate is in session. So we could always tell when the Senate was meeting. And there's a system of lights and bells throughout the Senate complex that told us what was happening on the floor at that moment. One light or one bell meant a vote was starting. Five lights or five bells told us that vote was ending soon and we'd better hurry over to cast our votes. Two lights or two bells were a "quorum call," which meant that we could safely continue picnicking with our families. We would leave the windows of the Russell Building open during our picnics so that we were sure to hear the bells and know when we needed to run off to a vote. It was a friendly, welcoming place back then, the Senate. That has not been lost: the sense that it is the people's building.

In my early years in the Senate, there were not nearly the number of votes that we have now. When the weather was good, the Old Bulls--the senior members who wielded all the power--would spend their mornings at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda playing golf. They'd return to their offices around noon, just in time for lunch in the Senate Dining Room. After that, they would sign their mail, perhaps make a speech on the Senate floor; and by then it was time to gather for a little drink in some senator's office. Then they'd spend their evenings at various social events.

The events that changed all that were the civil rights era and the Vietnam War, both in the mid-1960s. This time marked the resurgence of the filibuster, and also of the five-day workweek. The Senate was suddenly in session virtually twelve months a year, with only the Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving off. I remember coming back to Washington to cast a vote between Christmas and New Year's when Bobby was in the Senate.

And yet this constant work under extreme social pressure gave the Senate a real sense of community. We were in session a good number of evenings, so everyone stayed around through the week. I can remember having my children at the office. Many senators did. In summer, the military bands used to play in front of the Senate steps on the east side of the Capitol. At intervals, senators might scurry away from outdoor family picnics and onto the floor to offer an amendment.

This camaraderie in the midst of hard work helped senators to listen to one another, and sometimes even to take action on matters they might have otherwise avoided. That's missing today. Now the Senate is basically in session from Tuesday through Thursday. Colleagues "speak" to each other via BlackBerry and telephone. This loss of face-to-face interaction certainly isn't unique to the Senate, but I do think it's a loss. I'm a big believer in going to a colleague's office if I have something I want to discuss or a request I want to make. I want to read their face, interact, laugh.

Ninety-five percent of the nitty-gritty work of drafting and even negotiating is now done by staff. That alone marks an enormous shift of responsibility over the past forty or fifty years. We have an extraordinarily capable, committed, and professional staff, themselves tremendous public servants. Most senators do. And we couldn't tackle the myriad issues without their essential work. But we walk a fine line. As senators, we need to be vigilant that we don't lose track of the whole essence of what the Senate
is
; of what our involvement in it signifies; of our relationship with people; and of what all of that should lead to, which is the unfettered and vital exchange of ideas.

I think of the withering away of collegiality and sense of collective mission as the corruption of the Senate. I don't mean corruption in a legal sense; rather I mean corruption in the sense that things are broken. This breakdown has been driven primarily by two factors. First, there are forces that actually do not want the Senate to meet and be active in the affairs of the nation. If the Senate is not active, legislation slows down, we don't deal with the hard issues, because dealing with them suggests change. And second is the distorted influence of money and the power of vested interests in the legislative process. I don't think any unbiased observer can deny that the way campaigns are financed has an unhealthy influence on the legislative process. I was an early supporter of public financing for House and Senate campaigns as well as presidential campaigns, but that isn't going to happen in my lifetime. Perhaps the advent of Internet fund-raising, which was so successful in President Obama's election, will undercut the disproportionate impact of money on the legislative process.

I was naturally dismayed by the ambiguities of the 2000 election, and disturbed by the Supreme Court's role and decision-making process in it. But I applauded Al Gore's grace and civility in handling the outcome, and prepared myself to deal with the realities. Alan Simpson, who'd been a political adversary and personal friend of mine when he was a Republican senator from Wyoming, assured me that George W. Bush was a fellow I could work with; his word counted; and he told the new president the same thing about me. I took Alan at his word, which I always knew I could count on.

Our first social invitation from the new president and First Lady was to a screening of
Thirteen Days
, the new movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis starring Kevin Costner as Jack's aide Kenny O'Donnell. The screening was held on Thursday night, February 1, 2001, the day the Senate voted to confirm John Ashcroft as attorney general by a vote of fifty-eight to forty-two.

I recognized this invitation as a gesture of respect and goodwill from the president and took it as a harbinger of cooperation in the months ahead. In that spirit, Vicki and I arrived at the White House with a gift to the Bushes, a framed memento of President Kennedy's historic
Resolute
desk. On my first meeting with Bush in the Oval Office a week or so earlier, he'd pointed out to me that he had chosen the desk Jack used in the Oval Office.

When the president and First Lady came down the stairs, I greeted him and said, "Congratulations on your day." He shot me a cool glance. I guessed that I couldn't blame him much. I'd been vocal in my opposition to the confirmation of John Ashcroft as attorney general, and in the debate that preceded the vote earlier in the day I'd repeated my charge that the nominee had used litigation and legislation "in creative and inappropriate ways" to advance his ideological goals. How could we have any confidence, I'd asked, that Ashcroft wouldn't do the same thing as attorney general? I had not thought this exceeded the bounds of legitimate debate, and I'd assumed the president would not take it personally. He did not.

He introduced Vicki and me to the First Lady, and we quickly found an upbeat topic--the quality of the singing at the prayer breakfast that morning. The East Room was quickly filling up with other guests. We repaired to the buffet for a distinctive dinner of hamburgers, hot dogs, and chili, and then we filed in for the screening. Vicki and I were invited to sit in the front row next to the Bushes.

I could tell that the president loved the movie. He was amused that the film didn't show Lyndon Johnson in any of the critical meetings on the crisis, and got a great kick out of the portrayal of Bobby, who was depicted as always rasping about straightening somebody out, or kicking tail, or loyalty. We were out of there by 9:40.

President Bush had signaled a willingness to tackle education reform, and I was certainly willing to work together to find agreement on something that would make a difference. He called his effort No Child Left Behind.