After those endless hours trained on a deserted Senate chamber, C-Span cameras had captured the stunning spectacle of a cherished Washington ritual imploding.

Modern-day senators, accustomed to delivering speeches in a chamber that is vacant save for the C-Span cameras, were once again forced to spend hours on end together.

Then there is the way senators speak - at length, often alone in the august hall but for a C-Span camera, with bonus points for detailed digressions and polysyllabic words.

As the audience laughed, I ducked down, praying the C-Span cameras were still on Paula Jones.

They sat like bike messengers ready to leap up and deliver disjointed one-minute commentaries before the C-Span cameras that make a practiced lawmaker seem fully engaged even when the House is as empty as a bus terminal at midnight.

The danger, though, is that the Republicans who parade through here (trailed by the ubiquitous C-Span cameras) might wear out their welcome.

Americans may not vote in high numbers, but they know the material, if only through the osmotic power of 24-hour cable news shows, C-Span cameras and Internet saturation.

How can Trent count the votes in the Senate if he can't count the C-Span cameras in a room?

In 1984, he was speaking to an empty House and a C-Span camera, attacking one Democrat after another for supposedly unpatriotic sympathies for the Sandinistas.

"Let's pick on the Saudis for a moment," he said, grinning as the C-Span cameras rolled.