WASHINGTON – It was some time in early 1987, as I recollect through the haze of almost 30 years, and I was seated across from Sen. Mitch McConnell in his well-appointed quarters in the Russell Senate Office Building conducting an interview.
After just two years on Capitol Hill, the Louisville Republican had managed to snare a highly coveted seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he was thrilled. The position would provide entrée into matters outside America’s borders and, thus, further fill out his already bulging resume.
McConnell was being open and sincere. I left his office soon thereafter thinking he honestly was committed to learn on the jobs and he was excited about becoming involved in world affairs.
That was the Mitch McConnell I knew back in 1987. He wasn’t nor would he ever be, the life of the party. He was, indeed, single-minded in his devotion to politics and always very serious. But he exuded a desire to serve the country well and work with others to the nation’s benefit, even in those instances when others disagreed with him.
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to see any of that passionate lawmaker in the Mitch McConnell the nation gets a gander at today. Dour, dismissive, a tool of obstruction, he has morphed into what one wag described as the poster boy for all that’s wrong with Washington DC.
Honestly, I don’t know whatever happened to the man.
I guess it could just be the same old story – a touch of influence, an accumulation of power, a taste of the high-life and suddenly you’ve transformed from Jefferson Smith to Sen. Joseph Paine, the man Smith idolized but who had lost his “plain, decent, every day, common rightness.’’
This isn’t to say that Mitch McConnell once was the real life Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. He was never a policy maven, never really tried to be. Politics was the coin of his realm and he practiced the art confidently, and frankly there’s room enough for the policy experts and the political connoisseurs in the vaunted Capitol halls. To this day, after 32 years in the upper chamber, he has failed to produce a single major piece of legislation that bears his name.
McConnell chose to sow his legislative oats opposing efforts to reform the nation’s corrupt campaign finance system, equating efforts to sanitize the cesspool with an attack on the First Amendment. He eventually emerged victorious and has prevailed on the issue to this day, offering a clue perhaps to what sort of lawmaker and man he would subsequently become – one for whom seizing power means everything.
But his latest venture off the fair play reservation may just take the cake. During the summer the Central Intelligence Agency uncovered evidence that Russia actively intervened in the 2016 presidential election by providing WikiLeaks, an international organization that publishes secret information, with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and other sources, including the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, which WikiLeaks proceeded to release.
The CIA determined the intervention was intended to aid the campaign of Donald Trump, the Republican nominee and eventual winner. The effort the agency determined, went beyond trying to undermine confidence in the electoral system – the Kremlin wanted Trump to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
President Obama was informed and the administration was, understandably, concerned about the turn of events but they were reluctant to publicly divulge the information, fearing they would be accused of interceding in Clinton’s behalf.
The administration conducted a secret briefing for congressional leaders. Among those attending was Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who immediately threw cold water on any administration plans to release the information, questioning the veracity of the obtained intelligence.
According to reports, McConnell warned that “he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.”
So, McConnell knew as early as September that Russia was involving itself in the U.S. presidential election process in Trump’s behalf. He was shown classified documents and afforded additional evidence by senior intelligence officers.
But the truth mattered little to McConnell. Instead he threatened to characterize any revelation as a political act on behalf of the White House. Yet again McConnell placed party before country. And it offered him yet another opportunity to thwart the reasonable inclinations of President Obama, who offered only a weak tea explanation of the burgeoning events contemporaneously to avoid McConnell’s hostility, coming clean only after the election.
Early this week McConnell met with the press and, in his usual way, refused to say anything about the information he was provided in September. Nor would he discuss what his reaction was to that information, indicating the details were fairly accurate. He managed to say he has “the highest confidence in the intelligence community, and especially the Central Intelligence Agency,’’ without explaining why he initially doubted the evidence showing Russia was working in Trump’s behalf.
He added that, “The Russians are not our friends,” which everyone knew when he sought to bury the CIA intelligence.
McConnell, at least in this modern incarnation, has made it a practice of placing party before country. In this instance he essentially worked to protect a foreign power – one he admits does not have America’s interests at heart – in order to shelter the Republican presidential candidate from potentially dire political consequences
McConnell is receiving a lot of credit in some quarters for breaking with Trump – who, as anticipated, exploded that the intelligence service is full of beans – and acknowledging that the controversy should be examined by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Armed Services Committee.
That declaration comes, of course, after the election returns have been submitted. And he dismissed suggestions that a special panel be enlisted to investigate the matter. One of Churchill’s most accurate quotes applies uniquely to McConnell in this situation: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing,’’ Winnie said, “after they’ve tried everything else.’’
McConnell, at least in this modern incarnation, has made it a practice of placing party before country. In this instance he essentially worked to protect a foreign power – one he admits does not have America’s interests at heart – in order to shelter the Republican presidential candidate from potentially dire political consequences.
And of course it worked. Donald J. Trump will be the 45th president of the United States (god save us) just as it worked when he refused to agree to so much as hold a hearing for Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court – U.S. Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland – to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
For outcomes like this, McConnell often is described as a political genius. But the accolades fail to cite the “plain, decent, every day, common rightness’’ that McConnell has consistently failed to embrace.
The organization Change.org is circulating a petition seeking signatures to impeach McConnell for dereliction of duty and obstruction of the high office of president. Neither, frankly, reach the level of impeachable offenses.
And it would be a waste of breath calling on McConnell to resign, especially since he already has plans to run for re-election four years hence at the age of 79, beat his most recent Democratic challenger by better than 15 points and seems to revel in wearing the black hat.
What can be said is the morally compromised political animal that confronts us today bears little resemblance to the still raw lawmaker of 1987 who was thrilled to be awarded a seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
What a pity.
Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. A member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, he currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.
Kentucky voters should be ashamed for keeping this man in office. Its always putting party before Country, but we can’t see that.