The Washington Monthly’s Max Ehrenfreund nails it: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of the country’s most skillful and disliked politicians, came through again in helping broker a deal — but he clearly hopes voters and pundits will forget. But you can even take what Ehrenfreud says a step further. He writes notes that McConnell is portraying himself as the go-to-guy when people are really serious.
He quotes The National Review’s Robert Costa, who has been correctly hailed as having produced some good, old-fashioned topnotch reporting (versus blogging or bloviating) on the government shutdown debt limit default threat crisis. Costa interviewed McConnell and here was one quote where McConnell indicated how he’d like voters to view him:
“I’ve demonstrated, once again, that when the Congress is in gridlock and the country is at risk, I’m the guy who steps forward and tries to get us out of the ditch…”
But, as Ehrenfreud points out, the reality is different (and note my little addition at the end):
The senator from Kentucky was the original naysayer. Soon after President Obama’s election, McConnell instructed Republicans to oppose Obama at every opportunity. The goal appears to have been to make sure that the country was chaotically governed for four years so that the president would not win a second term.
Go back in a time machine and read that and Rush Limbaugh’s comments right after Obama’s election and you had a real Crystal Ball (apologies to Larry Sabato for use of that name) showing you what WOULD happen during Obama’s term, versus the hopeful analyses of pundits (including me). MORE:
This is the kind of dealmaker McConnell is. He will make a deal or put a halt to legislative action altogether, depending where he believes the political advantage lies.
It also seems that McConnell’s strategy of opposition has seriously damaged his party’s ability to develop and propose their own original ideas.
This is an extremely important point: political parties must not just offer a Hometown Buffet of red meat dishes for the choir, but some creative gourmet dishes for those who are not in the choir, or who may be political vegetarians:
Conservatives do have plenty of good ideas, but when constructive legislating is off the table for electoral reasons, it’s easy to speculate that legislators and their staffs will devote less time and fewer resources to thinking about those ideas — how to implement them and how to include them as part of a complete legislative agenda. It does seem clear that the Republicans in the House are simply taking their cue from McConnell, even though he chides them for their ineffectiveness in his interview with Costa. It was McConnell who first declared uniform opposition to be the mark of loyal conservatism.
When a party has no ideas of its own, negotiations become impossible. The cause of the most recent crisis was that Republicans had no positive demands to offer….. Had there been a positive, thoughtful G.O.P. agenda, Democrats could have conceded one or more of its elements, allowing Republicans to save face without engaging in brinksmanship and perhaps even implementing a worthwhile program or two.
McConnell insisted on putting politics before policy, which is exactly the kind of thinking that has crippled his party. He can be credited for rescuing Republicans, but only from his own mistakes.
So McConnell is hoping non-Republican voters will forget what he really advocated, how he really performed as Senate Minority leader — and who he really is.
But not just for them.
The Tea Partiers are mae at him, too. Glenn Beck denounced him, he’s challenged by a Tea Partier in the primary, and big bucks will be pumped into defeating him by a far right conservative PAC.
McConnell is trying to play several sides, which a skillful politician can do. But the reality and facts are:
McConnell has NOT been an example of the kind of person the United States needs to have in Congress to encourage compromise — a give and take on B-O-T-H sides — or to inch back to the days when building consensus was considered the sign of a statesman, a politician looking after the national good, not a wuss or political traitor…or RINO. He may come through at the last minute, but he record doesn’t show he’s nurturing the healthiest and most productive aspects of American democrachy.
If you had to place a bet you could say: forget the pundits and polls, put your money in Vegas now on McConnell winning re-election.
But that won’t change who he has been — and who he is.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.