If you didn’t intuitively understand – ahead of the event – that the allegedly physically demanding all-nighter the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate planned to pull last week to debate the Iraq war would be pure political grandstanding, the pre-stunt television coverage should have provided a telling clue.

As a network reporter described the plan advanced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., the camera panned to a Senate room where housekeeping staffers were setting up cots. Comfortable beds, clean sheets, puffy pillows, air conditioning, an intern to tuck them in – the whole nine yards – awaited those cream puffs who might not be up to the rigors of the pending sideshow.

Some grueling all-nighter, eh?

Cancel that mental picture you had of wearily combative puffy-eyed senators bumping into the furniture the morning after, punch-drunk from debating long and hard throughout the night without even so much as a potty break to bolster their spirits. Say goodnight to that vision of sleep-deprived Sen. Bodacious Q. Foghorn, hair rumpled and necktie askew, forging a 2 a.m. sound bite that might be used in his upcoming re-election campaign, no matter which way the political winds may be blowing at the time.

The Associated Press news story the following day told all you needed to know about this sissified pajama party. “Most senators got a chance for a few hours of shuteye even while a handful of their colleagues took turns droning on through the night with floor speeches,” the story reported. It wasn’t exactly the hard day’s night that had been advertised by pitchman Reid in his shilling outside the circus tent.

“All we have achieved are remarkably similar newspaper accounts of our inflated sense of the drama of this display and our own temporary physical fatigue,” harrumphed presidential aspirant Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz,, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Other grumpy Republicans called it a “useless political stunt.”

When I read all this in the morning newspaper it occurred to me that they sure don’t make all-night legislative sessions like they used to. At least not like the one, sans fancy sleeping arrangements, I covered some three decades ago as this newspaper’s political reporter working the Maine Legislature.

I can’t remember the specific Legislature involved, because if you’ve seen one you’ve pretty much seen ’em all, and time has a way of melding this stuff into one big blur. Nor can I recall the catalyst that turned what began as a party atmosphere into Augusta’s equivalent of the shootout at the OK Corral, which gives you some indication of how little most political spats matter in the long run.

But I do recall that what had seemed like a swell idea at the time – a plan to shroud the wall clock in the House of Representatives and work the night through in a marathon push to early-morning adjournment – turned out to be anything but.

As the Appropriations Committee began its grand finale performance of deciding which pieces of legislation would get funded and which would die on the vine, things were going swimmingly.

Legislators not involved in the inner-sanctum wheeling and dealing, facing hours of idle time until the final gavel fell and they could head for home, rolled a piano into the rotunda of the State House. They commenced to get all palsy-walsy, singing and dancing and generally carrying on in a spirit of remarkable bipartisanship camaraderie until the hard cold light of day crept over the Kennebec River, bringing with it a party-pooping reality check.

Somehow, in deliberations amongst the movers and shakers of legislative leadership, those plans for a safe and sane adjournment hadn’t worked out so hot, and now frazzled legislators who had been so recently chummy in their sleepless all-night box social were back in session and at each other’s throats. Dark insinuations of double-crossing power plays were flung about, allegations of perfidy in backroom dealings were rampant, motives were questioned, old animosities revived.

A hundred years earlier, some hothead would surely have settled the matter by challenging another to a duel at high noon on the Blaine House lawn. What this Legislature did was abruptly adjourn in a world-class snit. In record time, lawmakers abandoned the State House en masse to sleep it off, leaving behind only a bewildered janitor and a weary press corps to ask of one another, “What the hell just happened here?”

Ever since, when I have heard that some legislative body plans an all-nighter to show how dedicated it is to conducting the people’s business, I smirk and say to myself, “Oh, yeah. That’ll work.”

BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may contact him via e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.