Editor's note: This is the third part in a week-long series, 'Secrets of the Hill: What you don't know about Congress,' reported by Thomas Langhorne from Washington, D.C. It aims to give readers an inside look at Congress.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Confusion clouded the face of Emanuel Cleaver II when Indiana Congressman Larry Bucshon’s name came up. Who?

“Larry Bucshon,” Cleaver repeated, pausing as if to rack his brain. “Did he just get, uh….” he said, leaving the word, “elected,” unsaid.

“I just don’t know who he is,” Cleaver finally said.

That’s not necessarily surprising – unless you consider the fact that Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat, has served in Congress with Republican Bucshon for nearly eight years.

It’s a 435-member body, the U.S. House of Representatives. Spending just a few days a week in Washington when they do come here, members hurtle through a whirlwind of meetings, committee hearings, floor votes and fundraising calls and events that keeps them dashing all over the Capitol complex.

It takes time and effort for House members to nurture more than a handful of close working relationships among colleagues – time and effort many of them can't or don't make. Relationships that cross party lines are especially challenging.

“Most of their life when they’re in Washington is blocked into 15- and 30-minute segments,” said Brad Fitch, head of the non-partisan, D.C.-based Congressional Management Foundation, which works with members and their staffs to improve the way congressional offices operate.

“It’s very rare for a member of Congress to spend 30 minutes in one place before they move on.”

Several other House Democrats said they’ve heard of Republican Bucshon, but they don’t know him. Cleaver’s face lit up when he was asked if he knew Bucshon’s predecessor, Brad Ellsworth – a Democrat who last walked the halls of Congress eight years ago.

“Yes, of course!” Cleaver said.

When he was in Congress, Ellsworth admitted he did not know many of the House’s other 434 members and sometimes did not realize they were members until he saw them on C-SPAN. He said he had formed some close working relationships – mostly with other members of the Democratic “Blue Dog” caucus.

And Ellsworth’s predecessor, Republican John Hostettler? His closest relationships in Congress were among a group arguably composed of the House’s half-dozen most conservative members – a group to which Hostettler himself belonged.

The pace of congressional life doesn't help. When the work week whirlwind ends – usually at about noon on a Thursday or Friday – it ends fast. Most members return to their districts in a mass exodus. Some are in a hurry to make their planes.

“You can smell the jet fuel,” one House staffer quipped.

‘Potomac fever’

There is a stately hallway just outside the House Chamber, behind the doors flanking the rostrum of the Speaker of the House, that members and staff call the Speaker’s Lobby. Reporters linger there hoping to catch House members on their way in and out, but no cameras are allowed. Male visitors must wear neckties.

There’s another rule too, this one unwritten – Republicans and Democrats in the Speaker’s Lobby enter the chamber through different doors.

To understand how the House became so insular, Emanuel Cleaver said, you have to go back decades – to a day when members of Congress actually lived in Washington with their families.

Standing at the bottom of the steps at the U.S. Capitol Building at the end of a long day, the former Kansas City mayor launched into a blistering aria about hyper-partisanship in both parties and the legislative dysfunction that results. “Republicans sit on one side of the floor, we sit on one,” he said. “The only time I see a Republican is when I come up here (to the Capitol) to vote. Or go to a committee hearing. That’s probably the biggest reason things have turned nasty. All of the incivility, all of the difficulty working together.”

Cleaver, a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, has long been a voice for comity and conciliation in Washington. He pointedly refused to join the roughly 40 House Democrats who boycotted President Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, attending “out of respect for the peaceful transfer of power.”

Washington used to be a parochial town, Cleaver said. Living here helped members of Congress build the kinds of relationships that helped them govern. They played golf and went out to dinner together with their families on weekends. In this bipartisan bonhomie, everybody knew everybody.

“It’s difficult to call somebody a nasty name when your kid and their kid are in the Cub Scouts together,” Cleaver said.

But sometime in the 1980s and 1990s, gentleman politics gave way to populist zeal. Newer, younger representatives with anti-elitist sensibilities began nudging the House into permanent campaign mode.

Democrat Cleaver blames Republicans, who took control of the lower chamber in the 1994 mid-term election. Democrats until then had been in the majority for all but four of the preceding 72 years.

The new House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, encouraged members to spend more time back home and accused those who didn’t of having “Potomac fever” – shorthand for falling out of touch with constituents. Several high-profile members of Congress did subsequently lose their seats amid criticism that they lived in Washington instead of the places they represented.

But the notion of a permanent political class entrenched in Washington had already begun to smell to many voters by the time Gingrich came to power. In a widely publicized 1990 House campaign in Pennsylvania, Republican challenger Rick Santorum defeated six-term incumbent Democrat Doug Walgren by casting him as a creature of Washington. Santorum told voters Walgren, who had moved his family to D.C., no longer had his finger on the pulse back home.

Two years later, headlines screamed that hundreds of House members had overdrawn their checking accounts at the legislative body’s members-only bank without penalty. No taxpayer money was involved, but the free overdraft protection for roughly 20,000 bad checks – some of them for very large amounts -- amounted to secret, interest- free, personal loans. It was the kind of perk most mere mortals couldn’t dream of, and with the news came righteous anger.

Dozens of House members linked to the scandal retired, lost their re-election bids or failed in campaigns for other offices in 1992 elections.

The changes in the culture of Congress made living full-time in Washington a political liability for House members who must seek re-election every two years. It’s not the 20th Century anymore, for one thing. Control of the House does change hands.

For the most part, Congress doesn’t live here anymore.

“Twenty to 30 years ago, most members of Congress would move their families here and go back home 20-30 times a year,” said Fitch, who worked as an aide to four members of Congress in the late 80s and 90s. “Now, 80 percent of members go back 40-50 times a year because their families are there.”

‘How close your election is’

The transition from a collegial stay-at- home Congress to a fly-away Congress hasn’t significantly affected how much of the actual work gets done in Washington.

Even Gingrich’s ascension to power didn’t have much impact on the number of days House members worked in the Capitol. In 1994, the year before the Georgia Republican became speaker, the House recorded 123 days in session. The number rose to 167 in 1995, but it went right back down to 122 the following year.

Stiff-armed and stonewalled by a Republican- controlled House and Senate in election year 1948, Democratic President Harry Truman famously railed against the “Do-Nothing Congress” for meeting for just 108 days. But as recently as 2006, the House recorded just 101 days in session. Last year’s number was 190 days -- easily the highest in two decades, according to the days-in-session calendar hosted by the Library of Congress. But even that is still just more than half of a calendar year.

What has changed is how members spend all that off time they used to consume in D.C., playing golf and going out to dinner together on weekends. They spend it building their political profiles in their districts by making themselves available to constituents and raising campaign cash to keep challengers at bay.

Those activities help members promote their brands – just 3 percent of incumbents lost their re-election bids in 2016 – but do little to build relationships with colleagues in Washington.

Visualizing how it all works means understanding the typical Washington “session week” for House members. There are two models – Monday-Thursday and Tuesday-Friday. Only some of those days are full days.

In the Monday-Thursday model, the first roll call votes often come at 6:30 p.m. Monday. Some members roll into town from their districts later than others. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are full days.

If the House is in session on Thursday, it’s typically in the morning or early afternoon. Votes are held no later than 3 p.m., and usually earlier. That accommodates members who are looking to get out of town. It works about the same for Tuesday-Friday.

A congressional aide explained it over lunch on a Thursday in the crowded Longworth House Office Building Cafeteria.

The House had wrapped up a session week an hour or two earlier, and the thousands of people who work for the lower chamber knew most of their bosses were already gone. There were no more clusters of House members rushing to and fro, no stragglers wearing the lapel pin that marks one as a member of Congress.

There would be little of the weekend socializing among House members that Cleaver described.

Members and staff have a nickname for the weeks that begin on Tuesdays and end Fridays, the aide said.

“Those are called ‘Friday fly-aways,’ because you’re back in your district from Friday to some time on Monday night or Tuesday morning,” said the staffer, who didn’t want to be identified.

Yes, some members could come back to D.C. on Sunday night.

“It depends on, I guess, how close your race is, how much money you need,” the staffer said.

How much money you need?

“How close your election is,” the aide replied.

A member locked in a tight re-election race likely would want to leave Washington as early as possible on a Thursday or Friday, the staffer said, because he or she might have a fundraiser back home that very night. And other political events over the weekend. The member probably would want to spend as much time as possible in his or her district before returning to Washington.

“I guess it depends on how many events you have,” the aide said.

In politics, like business, a big part of success is just showing up. The conscientious House member also holds district office hours to meet with constituents, gives speeches, holds town hall meetings, tours businesses and workplaces around the district and performs innumerable other “official” tasks while away from Washington.

The official House calendar is dotted with them – “district work weeks” in congressional parlance. The traditional August recess – actually July 30 through Labor Day, Sept. 3, this year – accounted for five weeks in one fell swoop. The 435 House members used that time in 435 different ways, most leavening it with festivals, fairs, town halls and other public appearances.

‘It’s all about relationships’

None of it – not the breakneck pace of work on Capitol Hill, the desire of many members to fly away quickly or even the fact that Congress isn’t here for much of the year – has to prevent members from cultivating working relationships, Tom Emmer says.

Emmer, a Minnesota Republican elected in 2014, is an evangelist for the notion that congressional relationships must improve. He appreciates how hard that is.

On top of all the existing obstacles, Emmer names another: The biennial churning of House ranks as dozens of members retire or lose their seats in even-year elections. There’s a whole new class every other year.

“I know this is all about the relationships,” said Emmer, who frequently introduces himself to colleagues he doesn’t know. “So when I came to Congress, my staff set up 15-minute meetings with everyone on my subcommittees, everyone on my full committee, and then we just branched it off from there. Republicans and Democrats alike.’’

Emmer recalled a get-acquainted meeting in the office of David Cicilline, a Democratic member from Rhode Island.

“I told him I’ve found if I know why you’re here and what you’re looking to accomplish, there’s going to be a point in time where we’re either working on something together or we’re on opposite sides of an issue,' Emmer said. “And it’s always better if I understand who it is that I’m working with and what they’re trying to accomplish.

'Because we have different perspectives on how to get somewhere, but we generally want the same things.”

Sitting in his own office on Capitol Hill, Emmer vividly recalled his colleague’s reaction.

Cicilline smacked his forehead, rocked back in his chair and exclaimed, “I’ve wanted to do this for the last six years!”

Cleaver, the Missouri Democrat who lamented the lack of collegiality in Congress, “could do the same thing,” Emmer said.

James Comer, a first-term Republican from Kentucky, said he too has made a concerted effort to know colleagues. It’s a daunting task. Like many other House members, Comer is a former state legislator. But the Kentucky House of Representatives has just 100 members. That's a lot fewer than the 434 colleagues Comer has now.

“It takes a while to learn everyone,” Comer said with a smile.

Comer got started even before he was sworn in to office. The 2016 House freshman class has 54 members – 27 Democrats and 27 Republicans. Many of those members have spoken publicly about the bonding that occurred between them during a freshman orientation program at Harvard University.

“We spent three nights together at a retreat to get to know each other, and we’ve tried to stay in touch – because we’ve heard that there are a lot of members in each party that never met each other that have served a decade in Congress,” he said. “But I think that from my fellow freshman class standpoint, I think we have a close relationship.”

The freshman class of 2010, by contrast, had 94 members – but 85 of them were Republicans. They didn’t have the sameopportunity to make friends in the opposition party from the start.

Comer started with his fellow freshman class members, branched out to members from Kentucky and surrounding states Tennessee and Indiana with whom he must work on regional issues, and then concentrated on the other 45 members of the House Agriculture Committee.

“And now it’s through the (Republican) conference. We meet once a week, and I try to sit by somebody different in conference and on the House floor to try to get to know people,” Comer said. “It’s all about relationships, and that’s what I’m focused on – trying to meet as many members of Congress as possible.”

It's possible to overcome the many obstacles to good working relationships in Congress, Minnesota’s Emmer said – but members must learn to think anew.

“I would tell you the big problem in Washington, D.C. today — and I would suggest perhaps in most elected bodies in this country — is that somewhere, someone decided politics was a zero-sum game. Which means, in order for one person to win, another one has to lose. And that is simply not true,” Emmer said.

Republicans and Democrats must accept that those with opposing views are sincere instead of questioning their motives, as if to suggest no one could possibly have an opposing viewpoint without an ulterior motive or the desire to wreak havoc.

“We both generally want the same things, whether those are good schools, a great education, good roads, good transportation, clean air, clean water, whatever,” Emmer said.

'You’ve got to be able to talk to people that disagree with you on how you take that journey and get there, because that’s the way you solve it.”
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