[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 59 (Monday, May 3, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Page S4734]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          THE POLARIZED SENATE

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, that is an interesting segue 
into what I wanted to talk about, the polarized nature today of the 
Senate.
  At times, this Senate has become so partisan, and increasingly so 
now, that it is in gridlock. There seems to be a playing out of 
``gotcha'' politics that has poisoned the atmosphere in Washington, DC, 
so that it is hard to get the people's business done.
  When I had the privilege of coming 4 years ago to the Senate, I had 
read the histories of the great leaders of this body and the 
extraordinary consensus and bipartisanship, that they would reach out 
and bring people together in order to form a consensus that could help 
the Nation govern itself. We find we have exactly the opposite 
happening in the Senate.
  At the same time, what we find happening--under the Constitution, the 
separation of powers are a check and a balance against each other. That 
is beginning to erode. Instead, what we see is the power, instead of 
being equally divided and balanced between the judicial, the 
legislative, and the executive branches, we find in the executive 
branch almost an attitude that the legislative branch should become an 
appendage of what the executive branch wants. If that trend continues, 
the Constitution is not going to work as it was intended to work.
  We find in the histories of this great body, when we have read about 
those great leaders, even within our lifetime--Everett Dirksen, Lyndon 
Johnson, Mike Mansfield, and Bob Dole--they reached out and built 
bipartisan consensus. They were partisan when they needed to be, and 
yet they knew the way this body operates. One cannot break a filibuster 
except by 60 votes now; it used to be two- thirds. We have to build 
consensus, and we have to build it from the political center by 
reaching out and bringing people together.
  The sharpness of this poisoned atmosphere of excessive partisanship 
and excessive ideological rigidity has made it very difficult for this 
Government to function. As a matter of fact, we read the articles 
recently in major periodicals where it seems ideology is lining up in 
one party or another, almost as if that is the decision point, the 
choice, for America to make.
  But America has always yearned for another way and that was using the 
best of our democratic principles through the cross currents of ideas, 
through the intercourse of discussion, through the heat of debate, for 
ideas and consensus to emerge upon which to govern this wonderful, 
broad, beautiful, powerful, and very diverse country. Until we do that, 
we are going to continue to have a problem of gridlock.
  There is something I can do about it by the way I conduct myself 
individually, day in and day out--when I make mistakes, own up to those 
mistakes and apologize to the people who would be offended by those 
mistakes in the interest of comity and consensus building. That is how 
this Senator has tried to conduct himself, failed as I may be.
  That is how I will try to continue to conduct myself and hope I am 
joined by other Senators in that--through the way you conduct yourself, 
reaching out in the spirit of comity and personal friendship, and with 
a sight set on what is good for the Nation. Partisanship prevents us 
from building consensus in order to run this wonderful country we are 
privileged to serve and represent.
  Mr. President, that is what has been on my heart.

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