Colorado U.S. Senator calls for bipartisan seating chart - SOTU (from Politico online)

posted at Politico dot-com (Jan. 13, 2011):

Sen. Mark Udall wants Republicans and Democrats to sit next to one another at President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech — rather than on opposite sides of the chamber as is the usual practice — in “a symbolic gesture of unity rather than division.”

The Colorado Democrat said the traditional partisan seating in the House chamber is “an arrangement that has become a negative symbol of the divisions in Congress.”
In a letter to House and Senate leaders from both parties, Udall didn’t refer to the shootings in Tucson, Ariz., but noted that “the tenor and debate surrounding our politics has grown ever more corrosive.” He said seating the two parties together for the Jan. 25 nationally televised speech would be an important symbolic gesture for Congress to make to the nation.  “Beyond custom, there is no rule or reason that on this night we should emphasize divided government, separated by party, instead of being seen united as a country,” Udall said.
Members of Congress often applaud along partisan lines during the annual State of the Union speech. That “choreographed standing and clapping of one side of the room — while the other side sits — is unbecoming of a serious institution,” Udall said in his letter.  And, he added, it sends the message that “even on a night when the president is addressing the entire nation, we in Congress cannot sit as one, but must be divided as two.”
Udall said that by sitting together, Democrats and Republicans would “reflect the interspersed character of America itself” and possibly even “begin to rekindle that common spark that brought us here from 50 different states and widely diverging backgrounds to serve the public good.”