We’ve got some characters in the Senate, but all senators try to be civil. There are only 100 of us, and we have to work together.

But there are clues when civility is being stretched.

When one senator says to another, “With all due respect to my good friend Senator Blank . . .” the next sentence will likely be Senate-speak for “Screw you.”

One incident from my first year in the Senate sticks out.

It was a Tuesday afternoon, and all Republican senators were having lunch at round tables in the Mansfield Room, a historic and elegant meeting place just off the Senate floor in the Capitol.

A foreign-policy issue came up. Predictably, a number of senators weighed in (once again, often wrong, but never in doubt), but it was Sen. Lindsey Graham and then-Sen. Bob Corker who really got after i

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