Mitch McConnell has confessed over the years that as a young member of the Senate, he longed to be the one whom reporters hounded for information, while he jealously watched his older colleagues being hounded by the media while he was ignored.
“The truth is, when I got here, I was just happy if someone remembered my name,” he said Wednesday as he announced his time as leader was coming to an end. He noted that President Ronald Reagan once misidentified him as Mitch O’Donnell.
“Close enough, I thought,” he recalled.
Then, after amassing real power in the Senate over 17 years as both majority and minority leader and skillfully using it to bend the Senate to his will, Mr. McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, kept quiet. He often refused to even acknowledge the existence of the press as reporters asked questions and he strolled by like a sphinx.
However, McConnell was always clear that he viewed the United States as the world’s decisive force and endorsed Reagan’s view that the nation’s role was to combat the so-called “evil empire” of the then-Soviet Union. He reiterated that view Thursday on his first day as lame-duck leader.
“America is the world’s preeminent superpower – economically and militarily. But our influence and prosperity are made possible through a network of partnerships,” McConnell said. “The strength of these alliances rests on the credibility of the commitments we make to our friends.”
But a growing number of his fellow Republicans have a different view of America’s role in the world, and McConnell took this as an opportunity to resign, although he will undoubtedly continue to push for military aid to Ukraine in the fight against what is now Russia .
McConnell’s confrontation with the emerging isolationism in his party began in Cleveland, of all places, during the 2016 Republican National Convention, where Donald J. Trump was about to be officially named the party’s presidential nominee. Mr. Trump took this opportunity to reveal that he was not inclined to defend NATO allies unless they were better able to meet their financial obligations to the alliance.
For Mr. McConnell, an ardent supporter and defender of NATO, this was a naive mistake. He called it a “rookie mistake” by a candidate who was not well-versed in foreign policy and simply needed the guidance of a seasoned internationalist like himself.
But it turned out that Mr. McConnell had made the mistake. In the years that followed, it became clear that Mr. Trump truly despised NATO and was willing to let it fall apart. That belief has increasingly found favor with right-wing Republicans and reflects how out of step Mr. McConnell was with the mood of his own party.
Mr. McConnell initially viewed Mr. Trump as something odd, a politician who managed to insult people, denigrate Senate icon John McCain and others with his rallies and trolls on social media.
When chaos over immigration policy emerged during the first days of Trump’s term in office in 2017, Mr. McConnell was hardly alarmed – quite the opposite. He said instead that Senate Republicans were pleased to discover that Mr. Trump was a true conservative who traditionally pursued right-of-center policies.
For Mr. McConnell, Mr. Trump was a useful tool, a vessel that would allow him and Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, to pack the federal courts with vetted conservative judges that Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell could nominate then race through the Senate. They managed to exceed their wildest expectations by appointing 234 people, including three Supreme Court justices.
Mr. McConnell had helped Mr. Trump immeasurably in his presidential bid by keeping a vacant seat on the Supreme Court. That gave evangelicals and other conservatives suspicious of Mr. Trump’s character a reason to rally around him, confident that the next president would immediately receive a court appointment.
But Mr. McConnell ended up in the same position as many who aligned with Mr. Trump — the target of attacks. Mr. Trump lashed out at Mr. McConnell for, among other things, failing to repeal the Affordable Care Act and for working with Democrats on spending legislation to keep the government funded.
Ultimately, they were divided over Trump’s election denial and his role in inciting the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. But Mr. McConnell joined most other Republicans in pushing for Mr. Trump’s acquittal in his impeachment trial on charges of incitement of insurrection, which prevented an attempt to disqualify him from holding future office. In a subsequent scathing speech in which he said Mr Trump was guilty of a “disgraceful dereliction of duty”, the Senate leader argued that the former president’s fate should be decided by the courts.
As the courts now consider Mr. Trump’s role, he has returned as Republican leader and Mr. McConnell is stepping to the sidelines, the odd man out in a party that is quickly coalescing around Mr. Trump.
“I think it’s really important that our next Senate leader has the same priorities and goals as the Republican president,” said Sen. Roger Marshall, Republican of Kansas. “And whether it’s President Trump or any other president, we want the Republican leader to be on the same page with them and share their priorities.”
It was shocking on Wednesday when Mr. McConnell, who in typical fashion reneged on his decision to resign after zealously guarding against leaks, was met with more gracious comments from Democrats than from far-right Republicans fed up with his leadership.
That would have been unthinkable a few years ago, after he angered Democrats by denying President Barack Obama the chance to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in the 2016 presidential election, only to turn around four years later and narrowly get through extremely conservative Trump candidate to prevail before the election.
Although his time is running out, Mr. McConnell is far from finished. He said he intends to remain a leader through the November elections and that he will certainly use his standing to drum up support for Ukraine and other U.S. allies on a daily basis, even if some of his colleagues disagree.
Then he will have two more years in office in the Senate and will be free from the shackles of leadership. Perhaps then he might decide to answer some of the questions he once wished were directed at him, but which he has since locked away to avoid them.
“I will also finish the work the people of Kentucky have tasked me with — albeit from a different seat in the chamber,” McConnell said. “I look forward to it.”
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2024-02-29 20:12:39
www.nytimes.com
