Living in the world Mitch McConnell has bequeathed us

I was blissfully surfing through YouTube the other night when, alas, I chanced upon the face that buzz-killed my bid for escape.

Mitch McConnell, whose craven Senate machinations nudged us, goosestep by goosestep, toward our fascist future, was featured last week on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” and I felt compelled to click on the interview, to view it much the way we rubberneck car accidents – except for the fact that, this time, we’re the ones who’ve been totaled for the junkyard.

McConnell told Leslie Stahl he’s oh so very concerned about the global spread of autocracy: “This is a huge threat, a fight between the autocrats and the democracies, and when it comes to the democratic world, only one country can lead. That’s us.”

Does this hack even hear what he’s saying? This is the same guy who has put us on a glide path to autocracy.

He furrowed his brow on “60 Minutes” and tut-tutted that it’s wrong for us to cozy up to foreign thugs (“it’s dangerous to assume that by speaking to autocrats, they will somehow treat you better”), and he said it’s wrong to slap tariffs on our allies’ products (“It will drive up the cost of everything…it’ll be paid for by American consumers”), and he said it’s wrong to put nutcase quacks in charge of our life-and-death agencies (“vaccines are critically important to health, to having normal lives”). But he’s the big reason we’re stuck with those wrongs – not that he would ever acknowledge it. Wringing an ounce of regret from McConnell is like trying to wrestle an eel.

As the Senate Republican boss in 2021, McConnell led the crusade to acquit Trump during his Jan. 6 insurrection trial. Had he and his GOP minions voted to convict, Trump would’ve been barred from seeking the presidency in 2024 (Article 1 Section 3 of the Constitution specifies “disqualification to hold and enjoy any office”). McConnell’s fallback was to kick the can to the courts – “We have a criminal justice system in this country” – but it turns out there was a hitch, a Catch-22 worthy of Joseph Heller:

He had already rigged the criminal justice system to fail, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court he’d crafted.

He stonewalled Obama’s 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland for a year, refusing to even schedule a hearing, thus paving the way for MAGA nominee Neil Gorsuch in 2017. Then he rammed through Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination with lightning speed in 2020. The result: A MAGA doormat court, which last year decreed that a president can basically do whatever the hell he wants.

If you were wondering, McConnell has no regrets about what he did: “I feel fine about it.” And even though he still says that Trump’s insurrection was wrong and that Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons were wrong, “What happened in the past is irrelevant to me.”

That’s easy for him to say. He’s still shuffling around the Senate (when he’s not falling), his mind cleansed of anything that resembles a conscience. But past and present have collided and we’re fated to live with the wreckage. Thanks to McConnell’s servitude in Impeachment II, and his crafting of the MAGA high court, Trump has been freed up to launch his all-out assault on the judiciary – the last institution that’s been willing, these last few weeks, to throw sand in the gears of his fascist bulldozer.

I oscillate, as well, between optimism and pessimism. It’s heartening that a string of federal judges have blocked Trump’s attempts to freeze appropriated spending on federal grants and loans, dismantle the U.S. Agency on International Development, ban birthright citizenship (which is guaranteed in the Constitution), fire the head of the office that protects whistleblowers, and give Elon Musk full access to the Treasury Department’s financial data on millions of Americans. But the grinding sound you’re hearing are those judicial pillars tottering on their plinths. How long can they hold out? What happens to the rule of law if or when Der Leader decides to ignore all the rulings that stand in his way?

McConnell seems unperturbed about that; in fact, he told “60 Minutes” that he’s still cool with Trump’s agenda because “I’m a Republican,” a word that has been rendered worthless.

I’ll tell you a story about when the word meant something. Flash back with me to 1985, when McConnell was a newly elected lawmaker. He reportedly stood at the podium in a Washington ballroom and told this joke: “I read about a Paris newspaper that conducted a major survey and asked French men what they did after making love. The results were indeed startling. Ten percent said they made love again. Fifteen percent smoked a cigarette. And 75 percent said they went home to their wives.”

From pro-family conservative to water boy for a serial adulterer/predator, Mitch’s journey to the heart of darkness is now complete. And we’re the collateral damage.

–

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at [email protected]