NYT: Taking Power, Sharing Cereal:
"The roommates then repaired to couches to watch [the football game] and to stuff their faces with Sichuan beef and kung pao chicken. [Congressman] Durbin began talking about meetings he had last month with the presidents of Bolivia and Ecuador on a Congressional delegation to Latin America. Then he and [Congressman] Schumer started arguing about Schumer’s refusal to make his bed."Evidence, on an almost comic level, that power is social. Let us not forget that informal exchanges are a key part of any power structure. Chatting in the hallway between meetings, seeing people at dinner, serendipitous run-ins on the street: these are the moments where physical proximity and shared interests combine towards powerful effects.
If the political act may be representative, carried out under the steady eye of CSPAN, political action is equally well served by stealth, benefiting from the reduced congestion of private, personal communication to make small leaps before being re-committed to public discourse.
Not your average roommates: four congressmen, with their primary lives back in the home districts, share an apt. on Capitol Hill.