Mitch McConnell is stepping down from his leadership position as Senate Minority leader in November. He is the longest tenured Senate leader. The second longest leadership role was held by Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana. Mike Mansfield was generally held in high regard and respected. He was known as a statesman and was able to work across the aisles and actually get things done. The Washington Post once wrote of Mansfield, “ …he led by setting an example of humility and accommodation.” In contrast, McConnell will go down in history as an obstructionist and, in my opinion, is largely responsible for the Trump swamp and much of the political divide we find ourselves in today.
Some would argue that the political divide is due solely to the MAGA rabble rousers and Trump himself but that would be ignoring some of McConnell’s responsibility in facilitating this disease to fester. When Obama became president, McConnell stated that the single most important thing for him to do as leader of his party was to ensure Obama was a one term president by acting as an obstruction for almost every policy Obama wanted to enact. That would hardly be a paradigm of statesmanship.
He also played a key role in leading the opposition to stricter campaign finance laws which ultimately led to the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC which opened the door for a flood of ‘dark money’ to pour into and influence American elections.
In addition, to obstructing legislation and helping to open up the door for wealthy donors to tilt the election landscape using dollars, he worked with his other senators to obstruct judicial appointments that Obama tried to make. The most famous of these is the case of Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court after the death of Justice Alito. McConnell made some flimsy, nonsensical argument that, even though the election was months away, the judicial appointment should be made by the next president, whoever that might be and he refused to even bring the nomination to the Senate floor for a vote.
After the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, just prior to the 2020 election, McConnell changed his tune and when Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett, he rammed through her appointment in record time demonstrating that his hypocrisy knew no bounds. Further, in addition to pushing through Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, he was also instrumental in stacking the Federal courts with conservative judges, some of whom, were called out by the ABA for a lack of qualifications for such positions. (One of the most prominent today is Judge Eileen Cannon who is presiding over Trump’s classified documents case whose competence and impartiality has been called into question by multiple legal experts.)
Lastly there are the impeachment trials in which McConnell in his leadership role in the Senate, refused to convict Trump even though he had said publicly that Trump was guilty of the offenses charged. It just goes to show that McConnell is not only an obstructionist but also a hypocrite and a coward. What a legacy.
As Mitch rides off into the sunset, the rest of us are left to clean up his mess – if that is even possible. Many are concerned that the next Republican leader could be even worse and more loyal to Trump and the MAGA faithful. That is possible. But McConnell set the statesmanship bar so low that it can’t get much lower. Maybe we’ll get to watch a Republican food fight in the Senate when they try to elect a new leader like we have witnessed in the House. Then we’ll have two circuses to watch!
