In filibuster deal, a glimpse of how the Senate could actually work

The “world’s greatest deliberative body” may have found a partial cure for gridlock: actual deliberation.

True, this week’s Senate’s showdown over the “nuclear option” that would have jarringly changed Senate filibuster rules was ugly, with Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada riding his threat to go nuclear all the way to the brink, before a last-minute deal defused a crisis that threatened to stall the Senate until 2015.

But the dialogue away from the public's eyes in the Old Senate Chamber Monday that brought about the deal about also revealed something promising: When senators actually talk to one another, it seems, they’re not so bad at figuring things out.

The accord settled few of the underlying issues rankling members on both sides of the aisle. But many members said sharing different perspectives helped drive a consensus among the rank-and-file that the two party leaders should work toward a solution instead of allowing the chamber to go nuclear.

“Both sides understand each other better. We've taken great strides to restore the comity and cooperation that used to define this great institution,” said Senator Reid on Tuesday. “We have a new start for this body, and I feel very comfortable with it. I don't know how I could be happier.”

“Put this down as progress in the right direction and the best possible atmosphere to go into the balance of the year when we have much tougher issues to deal with down the road,” concurred Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky.

The stage was set Monday, a day when Reid and Senator McConnell were at each other’s throats on the Senate floor. Democrats threatened to change the Senate rules with only a bare majority of senators, a move institutionalists feared would be the beginning of the end of minority rights in the upper chamber and Senator McConnell vowed would make Reid go down as the worst leader in Senate history.

Nearly all the members gathered in the Old Senate Chamber (last used when there were only 66 senators) to talk about the rules. Some three dozen members rose to speak.

"All intently listening to each other, you could hear a pin drop,” says Sen. Jeff Merkley (D) of Oregon, a leading champion of changing the Senate’s rules. “It enabled people to understand the differing viewpoints.”

While that achievement may sound modest, it addressed an increasingly important issue: The day-to-day existence of United States senators does not allow for much across-the-aisle discussion nowadays.

When senators aren’t raising money, working on legislation, or flying to and from their sometimes far-flung home states, they spend most of their so-called "debate" time on the Senate floor “speaking to a void,” Senator Merkley says. “We’re speaking to a camera, we’re speaking to our constituents. But there’s no one there to listen to us among our colleagues.”

 While senators try to make up for that lack of contact with snippets of conversation on the Senate floor during votes or after the weekly lunches, where members dine with their own party colleagues, that amounts to “a fractured conversation and you have to pursue it with great diligence,” Merkley says.

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