Republican and Democrat Friends: Are Cross-Party Friendships Another Thing Women Do Best?

I remember attending the Congressional Women’s softball game on a muggy June day in 2011. Congress was in the thick of bipartisan bickering—another government shutdown was threatened—but you’d never know it from the way the female Congress members, Democrats and Republicans, were playing together, a united team hitting and pitching against the female members of the D.C. press corps

In warm-up, Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand was tossing balls with co-captain Republican Kelly Ayotte, and Democrat Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was doing deep knee bends with fellow team member Republican Jo Ann Emerson. The male members of Congress, mind you, had two separate teams—one for Republicans and one for Democrats.

Not so the gals, and when Schultz’s single drove in runners at first and second to win the game, women who were often in enemy camps during their power-suit-wearing day jobs hugged each other and high-fived like a scene out of A League of the Own. Moments later they dedicated the game to their absent colleague Gabby Giffords, who had been almost mortally wounded by a gunshot to the head months before. The good will of their teammate-hood just had to rub off in helping to govern the country, didn’t it?