It's April Vacation here in Maine and we just returned from a family vacation to Washington D.C. Much to our surprise, we had the best political junkie experience. We got to watch our favorite U.S. Senators debate the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
After we planned our trip, I called my Rep. Tom Allen's office to see what tours they could arrange. We got a tour of the capitol with one of his interns, which included watching the House in session. I then asked about watching the Senate and the office gave us tickets. We found that, while we were in D.C., they would only be in session that evening. We had no idea what was going on, and knew it might be a debate with one senator at a time present, but we thought even that might be interesting, so we changed our plans for the evening.
When we got there, we were told the Senate had not met during the day because they were waiting for Clinton and Obama to return from campaigning to vote on the Lily Ledbetter bill. We spent the next hour watching an amazing speeches by my favorite Senators, including Teddy Kennedy, who was so passionate, and Barbara Mikulski, who played off Teddy. Hatch gave a long, dry 11 minute speech--I kept feeling his heart was not in it, probably wishful thinking.
I pointed out the senators coming in to my daughter (I am sorry to say, I knew way too many Senators--"that's Grassley a Republican from Iowa" or "Carl Levin a Democrat from Michigan"--at my age I am beginning to forget names, but somehow I remembered the names of all these Senators--probably a total waste of my diminishing brain capacity!)
My middle school daughter ate it all up. She would ask "is he a good Republican or a bad Republican?" We have taught her that even though we don't like most things that Republicans stand for, occasionally some of them vote the right way on issues we support.
Then the highlight (as if seeing Teddy wasn't enough!) Clinton and Obama wandered in and out, shaking hands, chatting, and finally giving what the Washington Post described as "showcase" speeches--which they were. All sorts of other Senators, good and bad, came through, Dole, Finestein, Sanders, Boxer, Lieberman, Lehey, Craig, Murray, Spector, Snowe, Collins. I was in political junkie heaven.
We left near the end of the cloture vote and were glad to see our two (supposedly) moderate Republican Senators Snowe and Collins voted to end debate--unfortunately, there were not enough votes to bring the bill to a vote. We got outside to see Obama speed off in his Secret Service motorcade.
My daughter needed a current event for this week, so she saved the article from the Post to write about. The bill on pay equity was pretty clear and she understood it. She learned a lot about how laws are passed (and not passed). This event remained one of the highlights of her trip.
Have you had a political junkie dream vacation? What was it?