A Party Where Party Lines Are Crossed

‘Tis the season for dinner parties. Have a few friends over, get dressed up, sip a little wine, swap a few witty sallies.

In official Washington, this sort of social interaction has evolved into a peculiar form, herd-like in scale and oddly competitive in nature. (And given the surplus of Type A personalities around here, why is this not surprising?)

During the past couple of months, a flurry of phone calls and letters has gone out from members of the news media asking members of Congress to attend the upcoming Washington Press Club Foundation Congressional Dinner.

The black-tie affair, notching its 53rd year in January, brings together about 1,000 members of the press and politicians to schmooze and make controlled merriment in a kind of demilitarized zone of good cheer.

An annual award for meritorious congressional reporting is conferred on a deserving journalist, and a celebrity master of ceremonies tries to sustain a mood of politely irreverent political satire. (This year, NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert got the call to emcee.)

The press club dinner is one of several such media confabulations. But because it is scheduled first, the event is often an eye-opening experience for first-timers--journalists and politicians alike.

Held at a one of Washington’s cavernous convention hotels, the dinner throws together liver-spotted senators from the Deep South, fresh-faced representatives from Orange County and all the hues and power quotients in between.

The dinner also serves as a rite of passage for those lucky members of Congress who are asked to deliver short humorous remarks to the assembled crowd of supposed hard-boiled cynics. The idea is to lampoon Washington and the soaring egos that are drawn to its halls of power.

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“It is the one dinner that you really do remember,” says Rep. Robert T. Matsui, a veteran Democrat from Sacramento. “My freshman year, Nancy Kassebaum [the retiring Republican senator] got up there and said, ‘I’m from Kansas and I’m looking for Toto.’

“Boy,” he adds, “I’m glad I didn’t have to do that because it’s a pretty tough crowd.”

In the pursuit of laughter, many have failed. The huge dining room can get horribly quiet, and careers can be subtly affected when a speaker bombs.

But a boffo performance can give a member a public relations lift.

Two years ago, in one of the dinner’s most memorable recent speeches, entertainer-turned-congressman Sonny Bono, a Palm Springs Republican, crafted a dangerously loopy--and hilarious--monologue on his first impressions of Congress. The 20-minute stream of consciousness had the audience weeping with laughter.

(Bono on why people become senators: “ . . . They could tell anyone to go to hell and they would say, ‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’ ”)

“I thought he was going to fall apart when he started,” Matsui recalls of Bono’s turn in the limelight, “and then he just got on a roll. The press had been pretty cruel to him and, I think, members felt the same way up until that moment. But he made us laugh and the perceptions changed after that.”

Though the congressional dinner once was semi-private, C-SPAN has been televising the event for about five years.

“It always has a very strong audience and Capitol Hill reaction,” says Richard Fahle, a C-SPAN spokesman, “because it’s a fascinating look behind the scenes at one of the ways Washington works--members making fun of one another.”

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But Matsui wonders if televising the dinner purveys a false image.

“It may give a distorted, incorrect view,” he says. “There we are, looking pretty spiffy in our tuxes. You don’t want your constituents to see you hobnobbing at a big hotel with 1,500 other people in black ties. The more the public knows about Washington culture, the less they seem to like us.”

Regardless of viewer reaction, the congressional dinner gives Democrats and Republicans a opportunity to learn to like each other--or at least try to. Not too long ago, there were many more chances for members to meet socially, perhaps over a filet mignon and a glass of cabernet.

“In the past, the California delegation would meet for a big dinner, put on by some big California corporation, about once a month,” recalls Matsui. “Spouses were invited, along with some of the members’ executives, and it always seemed like you were sitting next to a member of the opposite party. You could really get to know each other that way.”

Nowadays, tighter ethics rules have reduced the number of such feasts--and the friendly nonpartisan atmosphere they fostered.

“We could use more opportunities to get to know one another in a nonthreatening environment,” Matsui says wistfully. “The congressional dinner is one of the few we have anymore.”