Washington • The way Sen. Joe Manchin tells it, the senatorial bashes he hosted on his beloved houseboat Almost Heaven were so good they could inspire the most liberal of Democrats and the most conservative of Republicans to start writing bills together.
Take the time he invited a group including Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas for a cruise down the Potomac. When Harkin, a prairie populist who has since retired, spotted Cruz, a right-wing firebrand, walking down the boat’s ramp, Manchin recalled, the Iowan balked. “I don’t think I can do this,” he quoted Harkin saying. “I don’t think we can be on the same boat.”
But soon enough, the Iowan and Texan got to talking. And by the next day, Manchin said during his final speech on the Senate floor, the unlikely pair had started collaborating on amendments.
“A lot of things happened on the boat,” said Manchin, I-W.Va., 77, eliciting laughs from the dozens of senators and spectators gathered in the chamber recently. “That’s just the power of sitting down and getting to know each other.”
His remarks were part of a time-honored Senate ritual that is unfolding in the final days of Congress as lawmakers wind down their legislative work for the year. Departing senators — those who, like Manchin, are voluntarily retiring as well as those who lost their reelection bids last month — take to the floor for one final farewell address. Akin to an office-party goodbye — only these are delivered at the Capitol and televised live on C-SPAN.
The speeches and tributes, most of which have lasted close to an hour, contain all the hallmarks of the tradition-bound Senate. They are part victory lap, part nostalgic reminiscence, part legacy-burnishing and — fittingly for a chamber that exalts self-indulgent oratory — always long-winded.
They feature thank-yous to staff and family, praise for colleagues, dishing about the backroom dealing that makes the Senate run — and sometimes a touch of bitterness or regret from those whose voters effectively fired them at the polls.
“Quite frankly, if I shed a tear up here today, it’s not because I’m emotional. It’s because my back is killing me right now, OK?” said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., 68, who last month lost a brutal and expensive campaign for a fourth term.
Tester was the first of three Democrats who lost reelection to give his farewell speech, and some of his staff aides and family members dabbed away tears as they watched from the gallery and outer edges of the Senate floor.
“Look, I’ve seen a number of these exit speeches,” Tester said. “And to be honest with you, they remind me a bit of an obituary.”
For Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, 77, who is retiring after a single term, the farewell speech provided an opportunity to unload his frustrations about some of the Senate’s quirks. Romney, a former governor and presidential candidate, griped about the ever-changing floor schedule, the “15-minute votes” that regularly last more than an hour, and the “show votes” leveraged by the party in power to score political points rather than pass substantive policy.
“The truth is, while I might not miss the Senate itself terribly much,” Romney said, “I will very much miss you, my fellow senators.”
The farewell tributes also offer a glimpse of the clubbiness and collegiality among senators that rarely makes headlines, but which still greases the day-to-day business of the Senate behind closed doors.
Romney, the only Republican who rose to praise Tester after his final speech, described how the Montanan went to bat for him during final-stage negotiations over the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill.
A Utah water conservation project had been deleted from the text of the measure, Romney recalled, and Tester pushed the other senators in their group to reprint the entire bill and add it back. Others argued that Romney should fix the issue himself by offering an amendment to the bill once it reached the floor, but Tester knew that could fail or become a political liability for Romney.
“Jon Tester stood up and said, ‘No, this is going to hurt Mitt; it’s not fair. We’ve got to fix this,’” Romney said. “He stood up for me and convinced the other members of our group to do something that was not in their interest — not in his interest — but in my interest,” he added, “because he was a man — he is a man — of character, and a friend.”
That quality of character, Romney said, was what prompted him to repeatedly ask Tester to consider running for president in Joe Biden’s place earlier this year.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., 64, urged his colleagues to channel Romney — the only Republican who voted to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial — whenever they found themselves pulled between political pressure and their own core values.
“As we solve problems that can only be solved by people on both sides of the aisle coming together and taking the heat that comes along with that, let’s ask ourselves over the next two or four years — what would Mitt Romney do?” Tillis said after Romney’s farewell address.
In between all the wistfulness and storytelling, senators rarely miss a chance to give one last plug to their top priorities or claim the final word on their own legacies.
In keeping with his self-proclaimed role as the king of compromise, Manchin made an impassioned plea for saving the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold, which he said he believed in “with every bone in my body, every fiber in me and every ounce of blood that I have.”
He also emphasized the importance of making friendships across the aisle, a talent that he cultivated as a senator and that will no doubt come in handy in his post-Senate employment.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
