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Issue 17.3: living
Posted: October 13, 2001

Power Couples of the Sexy 107th Congress

Matthew Lippert

With the Clintons out of the White House, one might be inclined to consider the power couple a thing of the past. But of course, you say! The only politically motivated DC match-ups require males with low self-esteem and women with penis envy! Well, you could say that, but you would be oh so painfully wrong.

Consider Maxine Waters, the liberal California Democratic congresswoman, and Jesse Helms, conservative fire-breather extraordinaire. In the Old Washington, they would only be in the same room if there were deadly weapons involved. But politics makes even stranger bedfellows today, and a cross-party inter-racial inter-generational romance has ensued.

"I had always heard, ‘once you go Black, you never go back,'" said Helms. "I never believed it until I met Max, though." Congresswoman Waters agreed, "I'm having more fun now than I've had with anyone else. I never thought that Federalist Society lectures on the advantages of Reagan-style environmental policy could be so special. Then again," she continued, "everything is more fun with Jesse around."

Even the previous odd couple is not the most seemingly impossible. Observant folks inside the Beltway may have already seen South Carolina Senator and President Pro Tempore of the Senate Strom Thurmond lunching affectionately with Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank. "You have to give him credit," Frank opined about the new love of his life, "Coming out at his age, with his background, it's a courageous step. And, to be honest, for someone so long in the teeth, he's voracious in bed."

These new pairings may prove themselves to be an archetype for generations of politicos. Close personal relationships with people on different ends of the political spectrum can prove fruitful in gathering votes for less controversial measures that might otherwise be opposed for retaliatory purposes.

This new cooperation could do a great deal to improve the responsiveness of government. A Capitol free of petty personal bickering would have a greater tendency to put the people's business first.

Then again, not all political pairings are made in Heaven. A great deal of acrimony can arise from a relationship gone awry.

Consider the very ugly, very public breakup of Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy (D-MA) and Secretary of the Interior Gayle Norton. At one point, after being so angry and depressed that he went on a weekend-long drinking bringe at his family's Hyannisport compound, Senator Kennedy threatened to "drive [her] off a bridge into a lake and make it look like an accident."

The Secretary allegedly sent him a letter shortly thereafter warning Kennedy that she would "drill him square in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge." Washington observers are almost unanimous in their belief that these two will do everything in their power to gridlock each other's proposals. Senator John Breaux, the centrist Louisiana Democrat who was once offered a cabinet post in the Bush Administration, calls today's situation a "damn shame." "We've taken a genuine opportunity to start cooperating, as I've tried to do for years, and allowed it to deteriorate into a gross display of bitter, foolish, adolescent behavior," he lamented.

Breaux then said that he would offer a resolution to censure Kennedy for his part in this "shamelessness." Senator Breaux admitted that he doubted that such a resolution would pass, though. "Ted's political career is just about as resilient as his liver," he said. "You can push it and push it farther towards the limit, but it's never quite weakened enough to just die."

For every happy couple meting out mutually desirable public policy, the new power couple structure has produced a blood feud. It's enough to make you want to screw an intern and deny any involvement in her disappearance.