pretty snarly how republican and sat on the back row not ready for prime time with conrad mack and jim burns and my buddy jim jefffords, and there were no rules. so i remember that i went to the parliamentarian and i said, i don't understand. i have spent my life working on the rules and understanding the rules and he who knows the rules rules the committee. so i told him that i worked on the rule committee, and i used them for my partisan warfare and i tried to figure out the rules. roberts rules of order? no. and so i finally went to the parliamentarian and i said, i don't get it, and i don't understand the rules. he said there are two rules in the senate, one is exhaustion and the other is unanimous consent. and if bob dole and george

mitchell get you exhausted enough, you will agree unanimously to anything. i thought that was a little oversimplification, because there was a lot more to that. i e told my son, chet, who is with me here with me, after a few months in the senate, i am either going to leave this place or change this place. so i kept my options open, and then i finally decided to change it. one of the ways we did that is to apply common sense and try to loosen the place up. i had people give me a hard time sometimes because of the things that we did, but we would have dinners for our spouses. we'd have bill coyne who became secretary of defense and write a poem, and i don't know if you helped me, don, write "ode to patricia" and we had the singing senators. we were pathetic, but the whole idea was to keep jim jefferts

with us. and we had a good quartet, and one night we sang with barbara boxer and then we realized the problem of the senate, they could not harmonize. th first time in the senate and we honored shawn concon -- sean connery, and i asked her if i knees were as good as his and she didn't even laugh. but we tried to keep it loose. i found out that as a partisan a warrior, i could keep an

attitude and not get anything done or work across the aisle to get some things done. that is the journey of the leader, you learn the rules and go u there the process and then you wake up and say, look, i'm here to try to make a difference and therefore i will make a way to work with the democratic and secretary of agriculture dan glickman and i want to be fair and honest with everybody as i can be and i want to be a way to do bipartisan ways, and of course, a lot of it depends on the personalities and the time we were there it was tom and me and bill clinton was president, and he was a challenge and opportunity, too. the way we got, you know, tax reform, and budget, and balanced budgets and welfare reform and save the drinking water and the portability of insurance as we worked the find a way to get a solution. i remember that i went to mendenhall, mississippi, and gave a speech to the rotary club there and i talked about how i had worked with ted kennedy on

the i.d.e.a., the program for children with disabilities, and i didn't get much response from the crowd, but when i was done, one of the old curmudgeons who sits in the back of the room at the rotary club and you all know them, and he came up to me at the time i was a congressman and he said, you did a good job and speech and did fine, but that part about kennedy, don't say that no more. so you get some flack. it was a great time and difficult time and that is why you become such great friends, because when you go through difficult times, you do grow together. and when you bleed, you bond. and personalities do change, and it is the 24/7nd i is people wh want to leave and go back home, and they leave their families back home, and tom and i did don't that. linda and tricia was here.

and that helped a awful lot. i don't believe you can be a good senator or congressman if you can't work on monday. if you trying to get on the plane or deal with constituents, and that is when you plan the week. if you wait for tuesday, the week is half over before you get anything done. i also realized afterf a while that the worst thing that happened every week was the tuesday conferences and caucuses and we called them different, and we called them conferences, and you call them caucuses, and we would have meals together and come out on fire. and the democrats would come out on fire saying we will take them often, and then we would have the same attitude. so tom and i would wait until wednesday to get pack to sebacks business waiting for everybody to calm down. so the news media and the coverage of a mistake hammered for days and can't shake it, and it really takes its toll, and

away from the family, and those things are a big part of the problem, but i believe it wiwil change. the majority leader position is one of the toughest position. harry reid has that title now and it is not a partisan thing. the president has a whole administration, and the speaker has the rules committee, and the majority leader in the senate has only the power of persuasion and respect for the position. it is not a constitutional position, but it is one of leadership where you have certainly for the republicans very few rewards and no sticks, and at least in tom's case in the democratic side, he had something to say about who got on committees, and on the republican side, i tried to manipulate the system, i confess, but it was, you know, you start with the most senior person who has come down the line, and they make those picks. so this is a challenging position. making it even more important that he be important to

communicate with the leader on the other side. what we are seeing now, the gridlock and the politics and all of that, it is the time we are in and the personalities without being critical of them. when i look at the next generation of leaders, house and senate republican and democrat, i believe it will be different. i hope it will be better, but i think that it will be different. for one thing, they are going to get the message, hey, a pox on your house is on both houses, and the rating is the lowest it has ever been and you know the highest rating of the senate has ever been? i can't remember the numbers be, but it was 72% approval. it was on 9/11 and at the end of the year, the american people saw the congress, particularly the senate, republicans and democrats, working together. trying to do the right thing for the country, and it was not always easy. i remember one time i was in conference having a hard time from phil gramm and don nickles

and all of my buddies over there, and tom was in his conference having a similar time and i stepped out in the hall to call him on the cell phone and i he answered it and stepped out in the hall and i said, we have problems here, and we have to get this done, and we will do it and we will do it now. we meet you on the floor. and he got it called up, and both of the conferences saying nay. now i'm not going to tell you what the bill was because you might say, yeah, you shouldn't have gotten that done [ laughter ] but that is called leadership when you are willing to step up. tom mentioned the 50-50 senate, and that one almost cost me my job. i negotiated a deal with tom that my conference thought was too good of a deal for tom, but i think that we did the right thing. we shared it. 50-50 in the committees and so forth. so you need to dodo more of tha

and the american people will demand that we begin to make some change cans, and we find a way. so many of these things are not partisan. a national energy policy and yeah, maybe disagree over the environmental stuff, and the alternative fuels, but we can work it out. highway bill? i mean, you know, that is infrastructure that is good for the country and good for everybody. that is not a partisan thing. now i do admit we had earmarks to help lubricate the process, and hopefully we will have a find a way to come back to that, but the majority leader position is a challenge, and a great honor. it's a position that we enjoyed, switched back and forth two times, and we never mitsdz ee e never missed a beat. even after impeachment we shook hands in the aisle, and we said we fulfilled our responsibility under the constitution, and so we were back in business.

on thursday, bill clinton called for an issue of a bill and never mentioned what we had just bp through, and that is the way it should be. that is leadership. thank you. [ applause ] >> i'm john ford, director of the projects here at the bipartisan center, and i'm here to hock some books, as you can s see, and to lead some discussion with the senators before we open up the questions to the audience. we mentioned the john jackson foundation and "hurting cats, trent lott and "like no other time, 107th congress, a time like no other that changed the country." i bring those up, and partally

senator daschle's term of 2001, and of course, that began with gore v. bush election, and then you had a 50-50 senate, and intending negotiations that you had over power and the switch of the parties of senator jefferts and then 9/11 and several of the periods were very different and you were both in the rooms at the same time, and can you say something about how you came to an agreement of sharing the power and what the challenges were of doing that? what the senate looked like and what leadership was after the switch of power, and then finally thry time after 9/11. i would not recognize it as a model for tragedy to bring us together, but what was it like to be leader in those times? >> well, i think that i would describe it as difficult a

professional challenge as i have ever faced in my life. it was that you realiz iz ized were very, very high. our country was under duress politically and as well as from a national security point of view and deep divisions with regard the how we ought to proceed. so it really drew all of the emotions that one might expect. and required ur your best ability to first listen to the different approaches that were being proposed and then really try to be as innovative as you possibly could, and then ultimately, you had to show some strength, and you had to say, this is what we are going to do, and persuade others to join you in doing it. so it required everything that one would expect i would think of leaders, but i think that only history and time will judge

whether we did it right. i look back with great pride and satisfaction with how we did it. but others might disagree, and at the end of the day, we accomplish what we really felt we needed to do with all of the things that you mentioned and the one you didn't was the anthrax attack in my office just a month later. so it was just an extraordinary time. but the one thing i would say is that almost everyone made the speech in one way or another by that they were no longer republican or democrat, but americans. everybody felt the need to rise to the occasion. i don't know what it is about americans in crisis, at least in that kind of a crisis where we were facing other crises where that sense of determination to be in an american first doesn't seem to be as evidence, but in this case, you know, i remember

singing "god bless america" on the steps of the capitol and just reaching down and grabbing hands on both sides and i looked and i was holding tom delay's hand next to me, and i'm thinking, this is a first, you know. but we did it, because we were all americans, and crisis to a certain extent elicited that kind of response. >> maybe i can explain a little bit bit by telling stories, but the natural inclinician is for senators to do things together, both pars th s th-- both par i . the day i was elected to lead in place of bob dole, and connie and phil gramm, and tom daschle and i said, tom, can we meet

your leaders. we went into tom's office and we said a prayer, together, to give us guidance and to pray for our country. that was our first act when we had our leadership teams together. and the next thing is that i think that, you know, the day of 9/11, we wind up in a cavern somewhere in virginia or west virginia, but i was never quite sure where we were, tom, but flying in a helicopter with tom and me and harry reid and other ways had gone their ways to get to the cavern and there we were together talking to the respective conference, and they were here and we were over there, and that was not popular with the team. we are over here in a bunker, see you later. and so we had talked to dick cheney a couple of times and then i said later on in the day, we want to go back. send the helicopter, and he said

no. i didn't appreciate that very much, but he said, no, we don't know if it is safe yet, but later on he said that the helicopter is on the way, and the helicopters were together, and we went around to the front, and tom spoke, and dennis h hastert spoke, and then when we could look down and literally see the pentagon on fire. another example and -- well, the anthrax issue. after that happened, you can't imagine how that affected you, too. you had staff people who were exposed to it, and it was tom's office and pat leahy's office and we ended up meeting together, republicans and democrats in the dining room in the capitol talking about the threat and what that meant, and how to deal with it, and everything. there was, you know, a guarantee you there was no partisanship, and we were trying to figure out what to do with the situation.

the other one that is a little lighter and one of my favorite ones is that i called tom after christmas after the house voted for impeachment and i was sick to my stomach of what we might have to go through and i did nont how not know how to do it, because it had not been done. i said, we have a problem. we have to figure out what to do with this. and we asked joe lieberman and slade gordon to get together to try to plan a way to get together with this. and they came up with a magnificent plan which my conference immediately stabbed in the throat and threw out the window, the and hi had to immediately start over. i didn't know what to do. so we decided to meet in the old senate chamber and begin with danny akaka to open up with prayer, and ask a little bird to give us historic perspective of what we were about to do and

then open it up with discussion to figure out how the proceed. we didn't know how to go forward and i can't remember exactly the order, but phil gramm got up and gave an impassioned pitch of course to move forward with the impeachment to get to remove him from office i'm sure. and then ted kennedy got up and gave an impassioned etch spspee then when we listened to it, it then connie mack said, great. t we have a deal, and it is the gram/kennedy agreement, and we went to the gallery and had a joint conference and then we said, what was the agreement? and then we have to figure out that we have to put it in writing so we put in the conference room, and i guess kennedy was in the room, and i put slade gordon in there and there were a few others that

were thoughtful members that they put on paper and went forward, but amp not sure to this day what we agreed to at that moment. do you remember that? >> i remember that we did it, but i don't know remember what it was that we did. >> but that is leadership, you know. there was a moment that everybody knew that we had a constitutional challenge and we had to do it, but we didn't know how to proceed, and if you had kennedy and gramm sounding like an agreement, and we went forward with it. i still get criticism to this day, people saying, you could have removed him office if you wanted to. but my favorite job in congress was not leader, but whip. whip in the house and whip in the senate twice, minority and majority with ten years in between the two. i counted the votes.

he was never going to be removed, so we had to figure out how to do it, and apply the constitutional responsibilities and do what the american people felt that we had done the right thing, and without embarrassing the institution, and we got that done, tom. >> and trent has told us a couple of times now that at those times of greatest crisis we came together. we came together in the old senate chamber for impeachment to decide what to do, and we came together right after anthrax in the senate dining room, and the reason we picked the senate dining room is that it was the only room large enough where both caucuses could be together. and there is a message there. the consistency with which we found our need to come together around crisis brought us together, and we were successful that we did.

and you would be amazed how rarely the two caucuses come together. if i have one regret today, it is that we didn't do that when we were in times not in crisis, and more time the come together, and he also said something else that is exactly right. caucuses and conferences become pep lrallies and you get out there and throw the red meat and you can't wait to sink your teeth into the other guys, and that emotional fervor has a profound effect on the way that the senate operates. so if i could do one thing over, it would be to find ways to bring the caucuses together more frequently, and eat together especially now when airplanes bring us to a circumstance where it is so rare that we are ever together anymore so it seems that we should do more than that

and not wait for the crisis to trigger the next meeting in the senate dining room or the old senate chamber. >> let me ask you, in the senate institution question, and the senate has many distinct features, but one of them is a super majority requirement, and different from the house, and that is under great challenge recently especially as the parties are more polarized and the house can pass more things, and the senate is seen as a roadblock. can you say something about the challenges of a leader with that super majority requirement in many case, second, what future the sent is going under fire given the polarizing effect of politics and what the future will be from this? >> well, i was frustrated many times with the unique features of the senate, and the power of the individual senator. the hold. tom and i tried to work to make

some changes on that a couple of times. we had written agreements to try to change it osome, but the worst one was the rolling hole, and first of all it was not holds placed on there by democrats, but republicans. one time i would find a senator to pull off, and then somebody else would put a hold on it. i do, but i don't think that you should take it away, but i do think that there should be some requirements connected with that. the super majority, i wouldn't change that, but, again, a lot of that comes back i think to leadership. i remember one time that the first time i filled a tree, tom was irate let me say. i don't know what it was, because it was not precedented, so there were 100 amendments or so, and so i added it up and tom

returned the favor as the years went by, but we didn't do it much. everything that tends to frustrate or plok or tie up the senate is done more and more and more often. i do think that the need to back away from that a little bit. now, i have said something a while ago that i have heard murmers in the room, and i do believe that earmarks should come back, and mainly caused at one point that i had level of prince of pork, and reached the level of two and never one. congress should not give up the power of the purse, but it got out of control. too much, too much, and too many people involved. there needed to be a process. when i first went to the congress, you had to get an authorizing committee look at a it. it was a corps of engineer project, you had to get it authorized and then go to the appropriations and get an earma

earmark. i do believe there is a place and need for it, but i believe there needs to be reforms and a definable process to go through and then allow it to go under better circumstances. but there are some things that need to be addressed. tom and i have talked a lot about this, and i think that we need to take a whole look at the confirmation process, and i think that we ought to do it now before the next eelection. and it does not matter democrat or republican, and it needs to be reformed, because it is a sensible process, and as far as this is concerned, i oohm not going through the meat grinder here, and to the credit of the leaders aed on the lamar l alexander and chuck schumer, they did take 230-something nominations that were lower level agency things that had to go through the confirmation process and take them out of the

confirmation process, and so there are reforms that are clearly should be considered, but the senate is unique. i geuess one of the problems an served well over the years, i was an institutionalist and i didn't like when we attacked the house of representatives and tried to tear it down. i didn't like that. this is a great institution representing the people, and if you make it attacking it everyday, that is not good, and the same thing with the senate. it is a unique place and i would not take the uniqueness away, but i do think that it is not good for the leadership and not good for the country when it is always being attacked or torn down by the people inside of the institution. most of the colleagues here know that tom and i didn't do that. we tried to make it better and not worse. >> i just couldn't agree more emphatically with what trent just said. i would add one thing, and that is, there is a reason why we

only had one cloture vote on the 30s and 40s per congress and the last congress had 230 close chur vote -- cloture votes. one, just expediting the work of the senate we started a process of dual track, and where we set a bill aside and take up another bill. while that sounded logical and it is logical in so many ways, what it did was made the filibuster much less painful. it made it much more acceptable, and we will put the bill aside and come back to it. and then we triple track and then quadruple tack and quintuple track and then for a while seven or eight bills that were all the question of filibuster that we had set aside and it was in the name of the reform that we started to do

that and the unintended consequence was that filibusters then became much more palatable, and the other big difference is that we no longer required members to hold the floor. if you don't have to hold the floor, you don't have to really pay the price. and you know, it used to be that cots were brought out in the night, and you had the sleep on cot cots, and you had to really suffer. well, we don't suffer anymore there. is nothing painful about a filibuster, and we just push it s aside and you don't have to hold the floor, and because we have made them so easy and routine and so procedural they happen now with a frequency unlike anything that we have seen in history. so if i don't know the rules need to be changed so much as practice around the rules that we have already got. i would think that, that's something that both leaders today have to look at. >> well, one rule that i would change and mitch mcconnell would like to hear me say this, but he would not like this either, but

i always had a problem with filibustering the procedure to proceed. the filibuster even taking up a bill, and something that just defies common sense there. now, it is part of the process if you want to block a bill or if you want to tie up this bill as long as you can so you can't get to the next bill. that is part of the process. but, you know, again, talking about the importance of leadership, and i remember in 1996 right after i had come into office, ted kennedy was blocking going to conference. one senator can block a senate bill that is passed from going to conference. and i don't know if i had ever seen that before and i was irate about it. i kept telling elizabeth ledgeworth who was my floor assistant, when it came to it, we can't let kennedy to