The Cocktail Hour Congress Forgot

Reflections from two important episodes of The Deciders

At five o’clock, during Prohibition, Speaker Nick Longworth and Democratic leader Jack Garner met in Room 128 on the House side of the Capitol for what they called striking a blow for freedom, a cocktail, arranged around a standing joke, between two men who’d been friends since their freshman class of 1903 and disagreed about nearly everything else. They rode to work together every morning, in a car, back when having a car and a driver was still something worth noticing.

French Hill has been reviving that ritual for about a decade now, at his own dinner table instead of the Capitol basement. Two Democrats, two Republicans, dinner at his house, until the arrangement stops being a novelty and starts being a habit. It’s not nostalgia. It’s math.

Photo by Ambitious Studio* | Rick Barrett on Unsplash

Brett Guthrie doesn’t set a table for it. His instinct comes from a father who worked a Ford plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, until it closed, and a family that started an auto parts business rather than start over somewhere new. That’s the sensibility he brought to a bill to protect kids online, written with his Democratic ranking member, that passed the House with real votes from both sides. Guthrie’s staff and Frank Pallone’s staff, mostly young people who happen to also be young parents, found they agreed on something and didn’t need an invitation to admit it.

One chairman built an institution around bipartisanship. The other backed into it and decided not to talk himself out of it. Both will tell you it’s rarer than it should be. Neither seemed interested in making a show of it.

Here’s how each of them put it, in their own words.

Direct Quotes

“My philosophy is that good policy attracts solid legislative support from both parties.” — Rep. French Hill

“I have two Democrats and two Republicans come to my house for dinner... it’s a way to build relationships. And those relationships have been integral to the work I’ve done in the House.” — Rep. French Hill

“It’s okay to knock heads in Washington when you disagree on a policy. But this isn’t something we disagreed on.” — Rep. Brett Guthrie

My Takeaway”

Nobody’s filming Room 128 anymore. But somewhere between a Kentucky auto plant and a Little Rock dinner table, both men insist it’s still there.

Full conversations with Chairman Guthrie and Chairman Hill are on The Deciders — watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.