The Post Style Section offers this perspective on the Democrats’ Iraq War all-nighter:
Looking at the cots, one couldn’t help but think of the scene in “The Godfather” in which Robert Duvall’s Tom Hagen, the Corleone family’s consigliore, and James Caan’s Sonny Corleone argue over how to respond to an attempt to kill Sonny’s father, Don Corleone.
“Sonny,” Hagen says, “let’s talk about this and get a meeting up.”
“No!” Sonny shouts back. “No more meetings . . . we go to the mattresses.”
In the film, going to the mattresses meant drawing in all the members of the extended crime family to sleep and eat in one place so they’d be together as they sought revenge for the Godfather’s shooting. In Reid’s case, the cots were meant as a symbol of his party’s dedication to resolving the United States’ role in a war he sees as already lost. Whether anyone would actually sleep on them was beside the point.
Except in The Godfather, the mattresses actually got used.
