How the Senate's Women Maintain Bipartisanship and Civility

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/04/how-the-senate-s-women-maintain-bipartisanship-and-civility.html

How the Senate's Women Maintain Bipartisanship and Civility
Margaret Carlson
Mar 4, 2012 10:00 AM EST

Congress's approval ratings may be in the basement, but civility and bipartisanship among its female members is as strong as ever. Margaret Carlson on how the senate's women do it.

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The stories about cross-border friendships in the Capitol are as old as the spittoons that still dot the place—but the emphasis is on old. There was a day when Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield had breakfast weekly with Republican Senator George Aiken, and when Tip O’Neill had an after hours whiskey with Richard Nixon. Now the only bipartisan friendships you hear about are between the women (there is a House counterpart to the Senate’s Supper Club) and both places are better for it. It is hard to picture Sen. Mitch McConnell taking freshman Senator Mike Bennet under his wing, as Snowe did for Klobuchar, or tossing back a beer (or Kentucky bourbon) with Sen. Tom Harkin.

You can watch hours of lawmaking on C-Span and never see one female Senator attack another. Nor do they do so behind closed doors. It’s not because women are “nicer” or the “weaker sex” that they don’t undermine, gobsmack, or betray each other even as they have reached the pinnacle of power where it is the coin of the realm. They simply got to know each other and as a result, says Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, “resolve conflicts the way friends do.”

The list of issues the women work together on is a mile long and goes from children’s health to national security. But women can light on an issue men might think frivolous but, in fact, is anything but. One of the most liberal Democrats joined with the fiscally conservative Snowe after a few infamously long flight delays made the news. “Our constituents were getting stuck on aircraft hour after hour, stuck on the tarmac, with no food, kids screaming, nightmare scenarios, 9, 10 hours on the runway,” recalled Sen. Barbara Boxer who, with Snowe, put together the Airline Passenger Bill of Rights Act. When a commuter plane went down in Buffalo the two got a new law passed that mandated sleep rules for pilots of small aircraft. They sent a joint letter. to President Obama in 2009 to nominate a woman to replace retiring Justice Souter, which he did in nominating now Justice Sotomayor.

The complaint you always hear is that there just isn’t enough time for lawmakers to get to know their colleagues to create the civility that is in such short supply. Yet, an X chromosone doesn’t give women another couple hours in the day. Women just carve out time for what they know is important.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/04/how-the-senate-s-women-maintain-bipartisanship-and-civility.html