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do that if the bill is overwhelmingly supported.

Well, everybody thinks that anything relating to women these days is going to be overwhelmingly supported by public officeholders: not necessarily by the public, but by public officeholders, who are in some cases very supportive of it -- I'm certainly supportive of it -- and in other cases terrified by any thought that they might be thought of as not supportive of it. So bills relating to women's rights sail through in the Congress.

She insisted on being the floor leader. The bill failed. It got a majority, but it didn't get the two-thirds. Basically this was attributable to her. Ultimately, the bill came up again, was modified -- I think they reduced the authorization by half; instead of $10 million, $5 million was the new figure -- and the bill was passed.

Now, if you talk to anybody down there, they will say there were two things that went into it: one is that there is a point now where people are somewhat fed up with legislation; two, that spending $10 million to finance women's conventions isn't the most supportible bill today; and, three, that it was Bella's bill. And in what parts and what proportions the damage was done, I'm not able to say. But surely that was one of the factors.