A two-year project first proposed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is finally debuting this month on C-SPAN in “The Senate: Conflict and Compromise.”
Go behind the scenes and onto Senate floor with producer Mark Farkas on @cspan‘s new 90-minute original production “The Senate: Conflict and Compromise.” https://t.co/1XucSDwKSv pic.twitter.com/2vl3q77YNh
— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) December 30, 2018
A historian of the chamber he runs, McConnell in the summer of 2016 proposed the first-ever documentary on the Senate and C-SPAN agreed after getting unprecedented access to the chamber and other ornate offices, like McConnell’s.
“There’s quite a lot of time left.”
CLIP: Parliamentarian of the Senate and Senate Journal Clerk
The Senate: #ConflictAndCompromise – Wednesday at 8pm on C-SPAN https://t.co/IrwKgkSycI pic.twitter.com/HS5Q33HjFQ
— CSPAN (@cspan) December 28, 2018
“He does love Senate history,” said Mark Farkas, executive producer for the Special Projects of C-SPAN.
“Would anything really be lost if the Senate didn’t exist?”
The Senate: #ConflictAndCompromise – Jan. 2, 2019 at 8pm on C-SPAN pic.twitter.com/xFQSF6ws4t
— CSPAN (@cspan) December 21, 2018
McConnell revealed that he is a fan of the slow, deliberative process in the Senate as an alternative to a sometimes hot-headed House. “Frequently, the things we do quickly are the wrong things,” he said in the documentary.
Farkas said GOP and Democratic leaders cooperated in letting cameras catch the Senate floor action the stationary cameras run by the Senate and used for daily C-SPAN broadcasts don’t show. “You see much more bipartisanship,” said Farkas. “Some of it is social, some of it is political,” he said, citing a description that the chamber is “like a cocktail party without the cocktails.”
He hopes it will open the door to more cameras in the chamber and Congress.
“We pushed the boundaries,” said Farkas. “I hope it does mean more media access,” said the executive with the cable consortium that has long pushed to put cameras in the U.S. Supreme Court.
