We’ve got some characters in the Senate, but all senators try to be civil. There are only 100 of us, and we have to work together.
But there are clues when civility is being stretched.
When one senator says to another, “With all due respect to my good friend Senator Blank . . .” the next sentence will likely be Senate-speak for “Screw you.”
One incident from my first year in the Senate sticks out.
It was a Tuesday afternoon, and all Republican senators were having lunch at round tables in the Mansfield Room, a historic and elegant meeting place just off the Senate floor in the Capitol.
A foreign-policy issue came up. Predictably, a number of senators weighed in (once again, often wrong, but never in doubt), but it was Sen. Lindsey Graham and then-Sen. Bob Corker who really got after it.
Bob is a former mayor and a successful real-estate developer who liked to get up from his table when he’d finished eating and pace the room. He would walk and he would talk.
I don’t remember what he and Lindsey started disagreeing about, but I do remember they went back and forth and got louder and louder.
They were both cordial at first, but after a few minutes Bob made a very salient, persuasive point.
I could tell Lindsey did not have a good response. So he simply said: “F–k you, Bob.”
That ended that debate.
I once saw Sen. Tom Cotton (Harvard Law, decorated military veteran) go toe-to-toe with the late Sen. John McCain at one of these lunches.
John was tough as a $3 steak and highly opinionated. He could also be belligerent.
He and Cotton got into it over foreign policy as well, and John, who lost his temper about a squillion times a week, finally snapped: “F–k you, Cotton.”
Cotton didn’t hesitate. “F–k you too, McCain. Just f–k you.”
That also ended that debate in the world’s greatest deliberative body.
I don’t want to leave you with the impression GOP Senate luncheons regularly result in stabbings.
They’re rare, but they’re not unheard-of because the issues we deal with are knotty and complicated, and most senators are passionate.
Much more often than not, when senators aren’t on the floor, in committee or attending to serious business in our offices, we like to joke around. It reduces the tension.
Republican senators meet three times a week for lunch to conduct business, with Thursdays being the most relaxed.
A different senator hosts each Thursday, and when it’s my turn, I fly in Louisiana favorites — shrimp, oysters, alligator, bread pudding, crawfish and stuffed bell peppers.
The week is almost over, and for better or worse, everyone is looking forward to heading home to their families and constituents.
One of the funniest people ever to serve in the Senate is Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
In November 2020, Rubio stood up during lunch and, referring to John F. Kennedy’s assassination, said, “This week, I want all of us to keep President Kennedy in our thoughts. I also want us to remember Ted Cruz’s father, who killed him.”
We all broke up. (President Trump famously accused Ted’s father of being involved in the Kennedy assassination during the 2016 primaries.)
We also give Sen. John Thune a hard time, a tradition that hasn’t stopped now that he’s majority leader. Thune is tall, thin, athletic and damn good-looking.
He’s not old — still in his 60s — but he’s a beast in the Senate gym.
That’s probably why we mess with him. We’re jealous. The guy’s a mighty intellect and a jock.
Just before he and I were on live television together once, I asked the host if it was OK if I mentioned in the interview that John has a tattoo of the Backstreet Boys on his lower back. (He doesn’t.)
The look on John’s face was that of a dog passing peach pits.
Over the years, I’ve learned even dyspeptic Bernie Sanders, a man who smiles with the frequency of a total solar eclipse, lightens up if you approach him in the right way.
When I first got to the Senate, I assumed Bernie didn’t like me because he was so gruff.
I learned later that’s just his personality.
I was determined to make Bernie smile.
One day I was walking over to the Senate floor to vote with the late and much-admired Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi when Bernie was walking past us.
I said, “Pay your taxes, Bernie. We need the money.” He smiled. It was a weenie smile, but it was a smile.
To some people, reaching across the aisle is akin to fraternizing with the enemy.
It can kill you when your next campaign for re-election rolls around.
But I’ve never seen it that way. It also doesn’t bother me when I disagree with my own Republican colleagues, who understand I don’t vote the set menu.
I’m more of an à la carte kind of guy.
I’m independent-minded and have always believed the majority sometimes just means that all the fools are on the same side.
I’m not the only one — colleagues on both sides of the aisle think like me, but there aren’t many of us.
On the Republican side, everyone pretty much understands that your vote is your own, and you try to do what you think is best for your people and the country.
When colleagues ask how I’m voting, I tell them and explain why, but I don’t give much advice.
I usually just say, “Follow your heart, but take your brain with you.”
Adapted from Sen. John Kennedy’s “How to Test Negative for Stupid: And Why Washington Never Will” with permission from Broadside Books and HarperCollins.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
