Last year Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was the Minority Leader of the Senate.  This year he is the Majority Leader, and the world is paying even more attention to his every word, especially in these first days of the 114th Congress. 

Today's quote, taken from a story in The Hill, strongly suggested the possibility of early and real cooperation between Congress and the White House on Trade Promotion Authority.  Here's a bit more from that story, as Senator McConnell expanded on the theme, saying:

With the Administration indicating it's close to concluding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, those talks and the effort to renew Trade Promotion Authority are likely to be frequent topics for these pages this year.

Today, they are the background to a question of comity and cooperation.  Do the headlines, the tea leaves, suggest any real willingness on the part of America's political leaders to cooperate across party lines and between one end of Pennsylvania Avenue and another?

The Embrace.  It wasn't exactly Rodin's kiss.  This is politics not romance.  But the picture The Wall Street Journal ran on its front page yesterday - an embrace between House Speaker John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi - gave us a laugh and a little hope.

McConnell on Reid.  Senator Reid of Nevada, the Minority Leader in the 114th Congress, injured himself last weekend and could not come to Washington this week.  In his remarks in the Senate on Tuesday (January 6), Senator McConnell took note, saying:

That too was encouraging.

Regular Order.  Finally, the message of the longer floor speech Senator McConnell gave yesterday was also encouraging.  In their headline for it, his office put the emphasis on "Jobs Legislation [and] Concerns of the Middle Class."  As we read the speech, however, it was essentially a speech about the Senate and its place in American democracy.  And it included these statements:

William Maxwell's beautiful novel Time Will Darken It is not a political book.  It's about life in a small town in the early years of the 20th Century.  But these early days of the 114th Congress made us think of it, especially the epigraph.  It's a little long-we'll shorten it here-but in it Maxwell quotes the 17th Century Spanish painter Francisco Pacheco on the art of painting landscapes.  Pacheco wrote:


One has to wonder, are the few signs of cross-party cooperation we have seen this week bright enough to carry the U.S. system to one or more real successes in trade this year?  We don't know.  We hope so.  We would have wished for an even brighter picture, because, as Pacheco said, time will darken it.