Even if Mitch McConnell’s health prevents him from accomplishing his stated goal of serving as Senate Republican leader through 2024, he will still be the longest-serving Senate leader of any party, one who remade the federal judiciary from top to bottom.
His success could hardly have been predicted when Senate Republicans elected McConnell as their leader in 2006. For most of the 40-plus years I have watched McConnell, first as a reporter covering Kentucky politics and now as a journalism professor focused on rural issues, he seemed to have no great ambition or goals, other than gaining power and keeping it.
He always cared about the courts, though. In 1987, after Democrats defeated Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, McConnell warned that if a Democratic president “sends up somebody we don’t like” to a Republican-controlled Senate, the GOP would follow suit. He fulfilled that threat in 2016, refusing to confirm Merrick Garland, Barack Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court.
Keeping that vacancy open helped elect Donald Trump. Two people could hardly be more different, and they are now at odds, but the taciturn McConnell and the voluble Trump have at least one thing in common: They want power.
Trump had exercised his power with what often seems like reckless audacity, but McConnell’s 36-year Senate tenure is built on his calculated audacity.
Even if Mitch McConnell’s health prevents him from accomplishing his stated goal of serving as Senate Republican leader through 2024, he will still be the longest-serving Senate leader of any party, one who remade the federal judiciary from top to bottom.
His success could hardly have been predicted when Senate Republicans elected McConnell as their leader in 2006. For most of the 40-plus years I have watched McConnell, first as a reporter covering Kentucky politics and now as a journalism professor focused on rural issues, he seemed to have no great ambition or goals, other than gaining power and keeping it.
He always cared about the courts, though. In 1987, after Democrats defeated Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, McConnell warned that if a Democratic president “sends up somebody we don’t like” to a Republican-controlled Senate, the GOP would follow suit. He fulfilled that threat in 2016, refusing to confirm Merrick Garland, Barack Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court.
Writer and director Aaron Sorkin, actor LeVar Burton, philanthropist Wallis Annenberg, and the late chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain are among recipients of National Humanities Medals who will be honored at the White House Monday.