A Light in the House: Farewell to a Senate Friend
This foreign aid package finally passed 311-112 on the floor in a rare Saturday session, with strong approval from all Democrats and about half of Republicans.
The cheers that broke out were not only for Ukraine but for the House itself turning on a light of hope.
It's quite a moment of sea change in the most miserable Congress anyone can remember. Lawmakers are leaving the House in droves.
This event might stop the exodus.
When you're a rookie reporter, you never forget when a senator takes the time to really talk with you.
Democrat David Pryor just died at 89 in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was one of the best in the Clinton era, when giants strode the Senate.
As governor, Pryor mentored the younger Bill Clinton. Arkansas punched above its weight in political talent then.
I clutched my heart's memory as I found legal pad notes from interviewing the senator years ago. Pryor began his Capitol Hill life as a page and recalled domineering Sen. Joseph McCarthy snapping his fingers, saying, "You get me my bedroom shoes."
One day Pryor invited me to a reception in his Russell office for Arkansas artists and added, "the president" would come. Sure enough, President Clinton waded through a throng with a kind word for every man, woman and child. For the boy with a flag necktie: "That's a good tie for a president."
That was once Harry Truman's office. "Old Harry Truman still kind of lives in this office," Pryor mused. Indeed, he and Truman were cut from the same small-town cloth in seeking a fair shake.
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