Thou Shalt Not Impugn a Fellow Senator
One of the most striking aspects of Tuesday night’s dramatic encounter between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren was how little real drama there was.
The Republican leader forced Warren to sit down for impugning Senator Jeff Sessions, President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general. Despite the huge uproar the incident created in social media, it was handled as calmly and procedurally as everything else in the Senate—and in keeping with the aesthetic favored by McConnell, who carefully maintains a dry demeanor even when wielding chamber rules like a scimitar. There was nary a raised voice—just a somewhat tense, drab exchange of parliamentary conventions, and then Warren sat.
The Senate is many
