Posted on 07/30/2002 5:00:14 PM PDT by ozone1
Clinton heeds advice to avoid being 'Senate show horse'
HEARST NEWSPAPERS WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Clinton is taking a lesson from a handful of legislative giants who have risen to power by mastering the arcane minutia of Senate procedure.
In a chamber that operates much as it did when John Adams presided in 1789, with starchy language and obtuse protocol, most senators rely these days on staffers and parliamentarians to translate the tedious 1,564-page Senate rule book.
But Clinton has persuaded the legendary master of parliamentary tactics, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., to conduct sessions tutoring her and other interested freshman colleagues - of both parties - in the ways of what here is called the Club.
"I think if you really want to be effective in the Senate, you have to know this," Clinton said in an interview.
"It is part of our history and it is the way the Senate runs. You want to get to know the rules so well that you can forget about them and concentrate on the substance," she added.
As part of their crash course on the procedures, new senators in the majority sign up to preside over the chamber for about an hour at a time, acting as referees over floor debate.
Clinton takes up the gavel nearly every day, said Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle, D-S.D. "She volunteers to preside as much or more than anyone," he said. "She's an 'A' student."
Byrd said he is pleased with the progress of his parliamentary protégé. He added that she has heeded his advice "to be a workhorse, not a show horse ... so that when you speak, senators listen."
The art of power Senate experts say learning to be an ace parliamentarian is to become a student of power. Senate Historian Don Ritchie said that "very few senators have really mastered the rules over the last 200 years." Those who do, he noted, "become people that others turn to. They become a good ally or a dangerous colleague."
Many senators don't want to stand up against Byrd because they know he reads through the Senate procedure tome each year, marking it up and consulting parliamentarians on arcane details. "He's the master, and that can be very intimidating," Ritchie observed.
Clinton, by now, has learned a trick or two herself.
Last December, for example, after anonymous Republicans used a tactic known as a "hold" to block her bill to extend unemployment insurance benefits for small-business employees hit hard by the Sept. 11 attacks, Clinton out-maneuvered them. She placed her own "hold" on other legislation, blocking it from moving. That forced the Republicans to relent and allow her legislation to go to the floor, where it passed by unanimous consent.
She said the GOP lawmakers "were acting like they were going to go home (for Christmas)" and leave the jobless insurance issue hanging, and "I thought that was unfair."
Clinton, in learning the intricacies of the rules, is following in the footsteps of famous senators of the past. One was Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia, for whom the Russell Senate Office Building is named. During the civil rights battles of the 1950s and early 1960s, he defeated many anti-discrimination bills through filibusters and other delaying tactics.
Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., for whom the Dirksen Senate Office Building is named, was another genius of the parliamentary rule game.
Perhaps the most skilled was Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic minority leader from 1953 to 1955 and majority leader from 1955 to 1961. He was the youngest senator to hold those positions. When he became majority leader in 1955, he was only 46 and was considered almost impossible to beat because of his mastery of chamber rules. He sat in the well of the Senate for hours studying procedure.
Causing misery Speaking of the past masters, former Senate parliamentarian Bob Dove, now a professor at George Washington University, said, "The power of a senator to make life miserable for others who are trying to do something is really legendary." Marshall Wittmann, a senior scholar at the Hudson Institute, a conservative Washington think tank, said Clinton has realized that "the way you really get power in the chamber is to understand the incomprehensible, the Senate rules."
Wittmann called the rules "the most tedious body of information that one would ever learn. ... It is the most excruciatingly boring exercise, but it pays immense dividends. ... It's almost like martial arts. You can use moves against (your fellow senators)."
Clinton described presiding over the Senate as "very intense" but said she learns a lot by observing and by talking to the parliamentarian who sits nearby.
The chamber is an arena steeped in decorum. The presiding officer is called Madame President or Mister President.
Senators must address one another in the third person and through the chair, such as, "Mister President, will the senator from New York yield for a question?"
Clinton agreed that the language is formal but said, "It's important to convey the solemnity and seriousness of what the Senate is."
The Holiday *Best* of Bill Clinton & his Friends!
-Some old strange clinton "stuff"--
| Liars-- and Sleaze, Incorporated... ( my files on the clintons and friends ) |
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Gawd, the Hillary Clinton I Am a Moderate Democrat Not a Megalomaniac Witch Driven Towards Abosulte Power Mystery Tour continues. How the press can pretend that this crap is spontaneous always amazes me, no matter how many times they attempt this...
LOL! Why that is just the point of the rules. They are arcane by design. Don't you understand? They are not about to change them. Not on your life. This is what makes them "powerful", don't ya know. Fagetaboutit my friend.
The hildabeast needs to be stopped......NOW!
i would prefer felon clinton, or the late senator clinton (ok, ok, just kidding), or vanishing clinton or expelled senator clinton (laugh) or...
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