Amid Kisses, Partisans Try to Make Up

There were no group hugs. No singing of “Kum Ba Yah.” No dramatic deals on tax cuts or Social Security.

All the same, Republican and Democratic House members who attended a weekend retreat aimed at improving congressional “civility” declared the event a touchy-feely success.

“There’s no blood on the floor,” quipped Rep. Thomas C. Sawyer (D-Ohio), one of the organizers.

Instead, fierce political rivals who had snarled at each other during the past year’s impeachment showdown shook each other’s hands. Their spouses met. Their children played.

Nobody had the heart to be bitter in a place where the street lights are shaped like Hershey’s kisses, the main drag is named Chocolate Avenue and even the air is sugary sweet.

This was the House’s second recent conclave on making nice. Immediately after the first one in 1997, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of communications at the University of Pennsylvania, found a noticeable decline in congressional name-calling, vulgarity, pejoratives and other sundry nastiness.

Of course, the Republican drive last year to oust President Clinton from the White House swept all that away. The hard feelings linger. Many of the most vehement partisans never made it to Chocolate Avenue.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) was a no-show. So was Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), the leader of the impeachment charge, who dismissed the bonding exercise as a waste of time and energy.

Among Clinton’s most outspoken defenders, Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) were nowhere to be found. Conyers said back in Washington that he regards himself as plenty civil already.

“I’m not going because I don’t think it would help me all that much,” Conyers said as many of his colleagues packed their bags. “I’m not the one being partisan.”

Organizers of the event fell short of their goal of getting half the House to attend. But they said they rounded up more than enough members--an estimated 186 of the 435--to start the process of burying the hatchet.

“The past two years have been very divisive,” House Minority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.) told attendees. “A tide of rancor and hostility has flooded our House and marked it with the stain of bitterness. We cannot ignore that.”

Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale), who attended with his wife and twin girls, found reason to think that stain might soon be lifted.

“We have 435 people in the House,” said Rogan, one of the 13 House Republicans who unsuccessfully prosecuted the case against Clinton in the Senate. “Most of them are kind, gentle people.”

The sessions were closed to the public, although lawmakers talked about them afterward. Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), a freshman who missed last year’s House vote to impeach Clinton, said that during one of Sunday’s small group sessions, he compared the Republicans’ zeal for impeachment to an addiction to crack cocaine.

“They knew it was bad for them,” Crowley said. “They knew it was bad for their party. But they needed their fix.”

One goal of the retreat was to make the case that the two parties were not as far apart as members think.

Catholic politician John Hume, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping bring peace to another intransigent place, his native Northern Ireland, delivered a keynote speech in which he offered Republicans and Democrats in Congress the same advice he gives to Protestants and Catholics back home: Respect the other side.

“I don’t see [Congress] as more divided than other parliaments,” he said. “Look at the British Parliament. Ever watch them on television?”

To remind House members what real strife is, actor Sam Waterston performed his Tony Award-winning impersonation of Abraham Lincoln, highlighting his deep angst during the Civil War. Later, participants hopped on a tour bus to visit the battlefield at nearby Gettysburg.

Another stop seemed less connected to matters of divisiveness and reconciliation. Lawmakers toured Chocolate World, where the chocolate came in chunks larger than independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s oversized impeachment report.

“There’s been a lot of partisanship and bickering and strain--there’s no doubt about it,” House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) summed up. “I think Hershey can help with that.

“But the final test is action, not words. It’s movement and behavior, and not meetings. Hersheys come and Hersheys go. The bottom line is, do we ever have any real change?”

Times staff writer Edwin Chen contributed to this story.