The deal-makers

Fourteen senators break free of pressure groups, right and left. They built a center in the world's greatest deliberative body.  And four out of five Americans applaud them.

In a television news first, Hardball brought together 11 of the 14 strong-willed senators, the so-called gang of 14 who grabbed power in the United States Senate from both Republican and Democratic leaders, thumbing their collective noses at their party's ideological extremes and avoiding a nuclear showdown over the use of the filibuster. 

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST:  Let’s meet the senators who are live here: Susan Collins, (R-Maine), Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska), John Warner (R-Virginia), Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas), Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana), Lincoln Chafee, (R-Rhode Island), Ken Salazar (D-Colorado).

Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), joins us via satellite. Listening on the phone is  Senator Robert Byrd, the senior senator.  And we're also going to be hearing from Mike DeWine of Ohio.

Let me go right now to Senator Joe Lieberman.

Senator Lieberman, have you gotten any reaction to your joining of this 14?

SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT:  You bet, Chris.  I’ve got great public reaction.  I think the average person was sick and tired of all the partisanship and polarization in the Senate and the fact that we weren’t getting much done.  And that wasn’t just about the judges.  So there’s a lot of concern about that.  It was about the Senate overall.

I had one man say to me, “You folks were acting like a bunch of children, and you finally stood up and acted like the grownups you’re supposed to be.”

I guess I’d give you one other positive reaction, which is very interesting.  And I bet my colleagues there got some of the same of this.

The day after this agreement when I went out on the floor for a vote, colleagues on the Republican and Democratic side who were not part of our 14 came up to me and said, “You know, Joe, for one reason or another, I couldn’t join the group.  But am I glad that the 14 of you did this.  You saved us from a disaster, and you maybe created some momentum for this to keep on going.”

MATTHEWS:  Well, it’s not all Pollyanna, is it, Senator?  Didn’t you take some heat from the real pro-choice people, the People for the American Way, people like Ralph Neas and those folks?

LIEBERMAN:  Oh, for sure.  It’s not all Pollyanna, but that’s what made it a great moment.  And look, each of us from our respective party, ideological bases, were told not to do this and were criticized after it was done.  But in some ways, that’s the point here, that the ideological groups drive both parties.  And they too often drive us apart so we get nothing done.

Most of us went to Washington, honored to be in the Senate not because we wanted to posture or please ideological groups.  We wanted to get something done.  And I think that’s what we did in this occasion, and hopefully we’ll just keep on going on energy and Social Security, and maybe even do something to make healthcare more affordable.

MATTHEWS:  You have to go, but a quick question, a quick answer.  I know you’re a student of history.  You’ve written a lot about history before you got here, “The Power Broker,” about John Bailey.

Let me ask you this: is this history-making what’s going on here with the 14 senators?

LIEBERMAN:  First, Chris, let me thank you. You’re one of the few people who remembers that I wrote a book called “The Power Broker” about the great John Bailey.  He taught me a lot.

Second, it is history-making.  And the one who reminded us of that was the historian of the Senate himself, Robert C. Byrd.  But let you know, history doesn’t stop.  And now it’s for us and other members of the Senate who are empowered by what we did to come out and join us and continue to get some things done for our country.

MATTHEWS:  Thank you, Senator Lieberman, up in Connecticut.

LIEBERMAN:  Thanks, Chris.

MATTHEWS: Susan Collins, you worked for the Senate for a long time before you became a senator.

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-MAINE):  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  What kind of reaction have you gotten from this?

COLLINS:  Very positive.  I found that people stopped me on the street in Maine and said, “Thank you for forging the compromise.  We’re so sick of all the fighting.”

Now, not everyone was happy. 

But, you know, I’m much more interested in what my constituents think and in helping preserve the traditions of the Senate.  And I think we did just that.

SEN. BEN NELSON (D), NEBRASKA:  Well, the same thing.  Recently, I spoke to a group and I got a standing ovation before I started and one after I finished.  That isn’t always the case, as you know.  But everywhere I’ve gone, people have come up to me and have commented about how important it is for the Senate to get along and get things done.

And they feel, as in the case of Joe Lieberman, that sometimes we haven’t acted as adults.  But on this occasion, we clearly did.  And I think the people are, by and large, very grateful for it.

MATTHEWS:  Senator Warner, one of the lions.

SEN. JOHN WARNER (R-VIRGINIA):  Well, I don’t know about being a lion...

MATTHEWS:  How old do you have to be to be a lion, anyway?

WARNER:  Happy to be.  But we really did what we did on a foundation of hard work done by both Bill Frist and Harry Reid.

MATTHEWS:  Right.

WARNER:  Let’s make that clear.

MATTHEWS:  How did that work?  What’s the dynamic there, Senator?  Because you senators established a strong center.  How did the positions of the two leaders on either side help to create that?

WARNER:  Well, I think, frankly, they kept our respective caucuses fully informed of daily, nightly conversations that the two had together.  And both came back and said, at this point in time, we still have not resolved this.  And that left an opening for our group to come together and do what we did.

But, you know, the Senate represents not just in the United States, but the world over, the greatest form of preservation of the rights of the minority to be heard of any legislative body in the world.  And we felt that we should keep it that way.  There wasn’t the justification at this point in time to use a method by which to go around the two-thirds rule and change the vote.  And none of us could predict with specifity what would happen to the Senate had that constitutional option been used.

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