Senators might lose their ‘French working week’ under Trump. That could be a very good thing, writes Eric Garcia. During President Joe Biden’s final major address on the economy, he did what he does best: wax poetic about the old days of the United States Senate, the institution that defined him. He told an especially instructive story about when he returned to the Senate as vice president and went into the Senate dining hall, where a central dining room table used to stand. That’s were Democrats and Republicans would once meet and talk.
![[Both parities now eat with those from same side of the policial aisle. Republicans typically bring food from their home state during caucus lunch]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/19/19/SEI233691791.jpg)
“You walk in — a long table sitting, I guess, 16, 18 people on the right, parallel with the table,” he said. “And you walk through an archway, and there was a table going the other way. One was the Democratic table. One was Republican table. And when there weren’t enough to sit at any one table, then they all sit together.”.
Some people might roll their eyes at Biden’s nostalgic storytelling. But he was talking about something subtly important. Washington is more divided than ever. Even the Senate, which sees itself as a vestige of bipartisanship, is more caustic than it has been since the height of the Civil War.
“It’s hard to really dislike an individual that you strongly disagree with when you find out his wife is dying of breast cancer or he just lost a child or he’s having serious physical problems himself,” Biden continued, as he reminisced about the days when Democratic and Republican senators were forced by location to converse with each other every day.
