U.S. Senators are among the most cosseted people on earth. They are fussed over by constituents, lobbyists and journalists, fawned over by handlers and flunkies. The Senate is a closed and comfortable world, a place even Senators proudly call the most exclusive club in Washington. Small wonder that the very idea of allowing television cameras into their august chamber sparked the kind of weighty deliberation and heated debate normally associated with issues like the Panama Canal treaties.
Would decorum be trampled and tradition flouted? Would speeches become superficially short, chopped into glib "sound-bites" for the nightly news? Or worse, would they...
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