What Washington could learn from Montana

On a cold winter morning in the town of Clancy, state legislators gathered to make sausage. Clancy has two bars, two churches, a school and a post office. It’s the kind of place that lends itself to community sausage making.

There is an old expression that you don’t want to see two things being made: sausage and laws. But when the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center brought together a bipartisan group of legislators, we learned that saying sells both short.

We were called together to learn, both literally and figuratively, how the sausage gets made in the spirit of Mike Mansfield, a M...