It was a balmy South American spring night in early November. The clock read 1 a.m. in Buenos Aires, a city that never sleeps. I had been observing the debate on the floor of the Senate since 5 p.m. the previous evening, and I could not keep my eyes open any longer. As I left the National Congress, I paused for a moment on the sidewalk and looked back. On both sides of the four-story Congress, lights blazed in every window, visual testimony to the vitality, energy, and power of Argentina's contemporary Congress. On the right side of the imposing, Baroque-style building beneath its bronze dome, just outside the House of Deputies, dozens of advisors, staff people, and secretaries scurried back and forth across the now-empty street between the Congress and the House Office Building. An important vote was coming down in the lower chamber, and Deputies were demanding information from their exhausted staff as debate swelled on the floor. But that vote would not come for another several hours and I, for one, had had it.