WASHINGTON -- While his colleagues rushed for the exits, racing to make flights home for Thanksgiving, U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman strolled forward, ready to assume his starring roll in one of the nation's longest-running reality shows -- live coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives.
He climbed onto the platform late last week, inched into the speaker's chair and listened while the "gentleman from Nebraska," Adrian M. Smith, highlighted America's fifth annual National Rural Health Day.
Next, Westerman recognized the "gentleman from Arkansas," Republican Rep. French Hill, who was given 60 seconds to mark the passing of a man he called "the father of black aviation in Arkansas" -- Milton Pitts Crenchaw.
After that, Westerman gave the floor to the "gentleman from Louisiana," Cedric L. Richmond, who battled to be heard above a buzz of conversation as he denounced "the terrorism that has been going on in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad."
Eventually, when the off-camera congressional chatter reached a crescendo, Westerman grabbed the wooden gavel and gave a sonorous smack, delivering lines he had memorized, words that would be familiar to any C-SPAN junkie: "The House will be in order. Please take your conversations off the House floor." Pause. "The gentleman may proceed."
Westerman, a first-term Republican from Hot Springs, presided long enough to let eight or nine of his colleagues give one-minute speeches.
He tapped the gavel lightly to warn long-winded speakers that their 60 seconds had passed.
Then, his duty fulfilled, Westerman yielded his seat to another neophyte and exited the stage.
For Westerman, Thanksgiving vacation could finally began.
The House speaker does not preside at all times during a House session. During the slow times, he hands that duty off to other representatives.
Arkansas' 4th District congressman said freshmen from the majority party are routinely required to take shifts, frequently entrusted with the time slots when the chamber is nearly deserted and the votes are already over.
This period is known as "special orders," and it's a chance for members to speechify.
"There's not a lot of parliamentary procedure that takes place. Generally, you recognize the gentleman or gentlelady ... and then you sit down and wait for them to finish their presentations," he said.
"It's not like you're presiding over the State of the Union address or something, [but] you've got the gavel and you're sitting in the big chair."
When he sits in the chair, he says, his cellphone often buzzes, vibrating with a stream of messages from friends who have spotted him on TV.
"You don't realize how many people watch C-SPAN," he said. C-SPAN -- short for Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network -- began broadcasting unedited coverage of government and political proceedings in 1979.
Some congressmen are particularly good at filling in, Westerman said, singling out his colleague, Arkansas' 3rd District U.S. Rep. Steve Womack as an example.
Womack, a Rogers Republican, says he started presiding over "special orders" when he arrived in Congress in 2011, and eventually was given more difficult time slots.
"The floor leadership knew that I'd been a mayor, that I'd presided over a lot of meetings, that I had a pretty good grasp of the rules of the House and the decorum in the chamber, so they called on me quite a bit during my freshman year," he said.
Since then, they've continued to draft him from time to time.
The night of the "fiscal cliff" in January 2013, when Bush-era tax cuts were to expire unless Congress acted, Womack took the gavel at 9 p.m. and ran the meeting until it adjourned at 2 a.m.
One of the goals, he said, is to avoid embarrassment.
There's a parliamentarian and a timekeeper sitting nearby to help things run smoothly, and a "kill switch" -- a button that silences the microphone while the officials confer.
"There's an up-and-down button that brings the lectern higher and lower if you need it, based on your height. The mic you assume is always on. You have to know what to say and when to say it and try not to make a fool of yourself, because you're in front of a C-SPAN audience. There could be millions of people [watching] at any one time."
House sessions have been televised live since 1979. The Senate opened its chambers to the cameras in 1986.
First-term senators are expected to help keep things running on their side of the Capitol, so their more experienced peers can focus on other matters.
Arkansas' U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, who won his seat in 2014, had a slot on last week's Senate duty roster.
He says he typically does the job three hours each week.
"The presiding officer duty is very much a duty, so the less time you've spent in the Senate, the more time you get to do it," the Dardanelle Republican said.
"It's a good opportunity for new senators like me to learn more about Senate procedure and rules, which can be an effective way to advance my ideas and policies that help Arkansans because the Senate rules can be so arcane. It's also a way to get to know about my Senate colleagues as they give speeches to which I listen."
Cotton was given similar duties while serving one term as a U.S representative. So was Arkansas' U.S. Sen. John Boozman, who served nearly a decade in the House before moving to the Senate.
Running the Senate isn't a whole lot different from running the House, according to Boozman.
"The rules are a little different, but the procedure is basically the same," he said.
That rush of excitement, that sense of amazement still hits him. "I have the same feelings every time I sit up there," Boozman said. "It's pretty special."
Boozman, a Republican from Rogers, said he barely knew his way around Capitol Hill the first time they handed him the gavel in the House.
"I had won a special election and literally two or three days after I was sworn in, I was sitting in the chair presiding. I had come from the school board to Congress, and you can imagine being so excited," he said.
"It's not like I was a political junkie. I'd never really been to Washington before I was elected. And so, as a result, I truly was in awe."
Metro on 11/27/2015