David Rubenstein: Congress reminds me of pandas

Members of Congress have been compared to many things, but David Rubenstein may very well be the first person to compare America’s lawmakers to sex-deprived panda bears.

During a discussion last week with James Fallows at The Atlantic and Aspen Institute’s Washington Ideas Forum at the Newseum, the Carlyle Group co-founder described how — as a board member for the Smithsonian — he learned a lot about panda-mating habits from the head of the National Zoo.

“They can only reproduce three hours a day, one day a year,” Rubenstein explained.

The philanthropist then went into a little more detail about the bamboo-loving creatures, saying that when they do get together that one day out of the year, their mating abilities are, um, limited: “You know when you only do this one day a year, you don’t have a lot of experience. So the parts don’t often go where they’re supposed to go.”

Rubenstein continued to laughs from the audience, “The point is, that they know what they’re supposed to do, but they don’t really know how to do it. And it’s not unlike members of Congress.”

He paused before adding, “They know what they’re supposed to do. They know they’re supposed to solve the fiscal cliff. They don’t quite know how to do it and hopefully they’ll get it resolved.”

But Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), for one, pitied one of the parties in Rubenstein’s analogy. As the House minority leader took the stage as part of the forum’s next set of panelists, she quipped, “Poor pandas, to be compared to politicians.”

Photo: Wikipedia