Gingrich is right. McConnell is the equal of Lyndon B. Johnson, the former president who was known as the “master of the Senate” for the power he wielded as majority leader. The complexity of our time, the depth of partisan rancor and the intensity of media glare may lead McConnell to be judged a more talented legislator than any other senator. Fresh off the 96-to-0 vote to pass the $2.2 trillion emergency coronavirus relief legislation, the largest rescue package in U.S. history, McConnell must prepare to guide his caucus through the legislative equivalent of Scylla and Charybdis: the dangers of doing too much or too little while still guarding core American commitments to free speech, free markets and the rule of law.
Good that McConnell is a constitutionalist, first and foremost. In the battle of free speech vs. regulation under the guise of campaign finance reform — which pitted McConnell against the late senator John McCain — the 2003 case McConnell v. Federal Election Commission laid the groundwork for the eventual triumph of speech in the landmark 2010 Citizens United decision. An advocate for Kentucky since he arrived in the Senate in 1985, McConnell has been a Reagan hawk on defense spending, and he rallied support for President George W. Bush’s “surge” strategy in Iraq. He lined up GOP support for the 2008 financial rescue package when the tea party was raging against it. McConnell hasn’t always won; he failed to stop Obamacare, for instance. But he also returned to repeal Obamacare’s “individual mandate,” hated by constitutionalists. He kept open the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. He also averted the fiscal cliff and other crises by wrestling three major spending deals with then-Vice President Joe Biden.
It is his effect on the judiciary, however, that has cemented McConnell’s reputation as master of “The Long Game.” (The title of his memoir alludes to his focus on not just the Senate but also our constitutional order.) After Justice Antonin Scalia died in early 2016, McConnell would not allow hearings or votes on a Supreme Court nominee before Election Day. He made clear that the American people would decide who nominated the next justice. McConnell’s GOP caucus confirmed Neil M. Gorsuch in 2017 and Brett M. Kavanaugh in 2018 — the latter in the face of a scurrilous assault — ensuring a five-justice conservative majority. McConnell has prioritized populating the federal bench with “originalists” and during the Trump administration has presided over the confirmation of 51 federal appeals court judges, 138 district court judges and other judges to specialty courts. The effects will be seen for at least a generation.
McConnell opposed, unsuccessfully, the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement but helped lay the basis for President Trump’s withdrawal from his predecessor’s Iran deal and the Paris climate agreement. Three major trade deals have cleared the Senate under his watch in recent years and, of course, the Trump tax cuts. The majority leader has held his often-riven caucus together with the support of wily veterans such as Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) and the now-retired Orrin Hatch (Utah), as well as centrists including Rob Portman (Ohio) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.). He has found elbow room for brilliant newcomers such as Ted Cruz (Tex.), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Tim Scott (S.C.) and Tom Cotton, a shared favorite of both McConnell and Trump. Cotton’s home state of Arkansas is, like McConnell’s, seen as “flyover country,” so the leader’s appreciation for another Southern gentleman with smarts is no surprise.
I wish that McConnell would do more interviews and Sunday shows, appear on hostile networks and take questions from fair-minded MSMers such as NBC’s Chuck Todd or CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Now, having saved the Constitution from legal activists, he is called to work with the president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to resurrect the shuttered U.S. economy. This must be done, he told me this week, without allowing Pelosi or Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to use the crisis to remake America. McConnell seeks commitment to recovery-only measures and a truce to the great partisan shootout. “Goodness,” he told me. “I wish we could all just turn this off, you know, until we get to a period where we’ve bent the curve and are beginning to get back to normal. I don’t expect that’s going to happen, however.”
Ever the realist, McConnell is deeply conservative, always a gentleman and the senator you never want opposite your cause. Particularly in a crisis, it’s reassuring to know that a legislator who is is sure to rank among the Senate’s great leaders is at work for the country, the Constitution and the Republican Party.
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