Mitch McConnell’s legacy: promoting himself, not Kentucky

So, Senator Mitch McConnell has announced that he will step down as the Republican leader in the Senate lat­er this year, a posi­tion he has held for sev­en­teen years.  He has not, how­ev­er, com­mit­ted to leav­ing the Senate at the end of his present term in 2026 (more’s the pity).

And, of course, imme­di­ate­ly after his announce­ment, the plau­dits began to roll in, tout­ing his long years of ser­vice and ded­i­ca­tion, except from fel­low Kentucky sen­a­tor Rand Paul, whose com­ments seemed some­what luke­warm about the abdi­ca­tion. That’s prob­a­bly because McConnell and Paul have sel­dom seen eye-to-eye on vir­tu­al­ly anything.

While all the high praise is com­ing in for the Senator, there has been lit­tle sub­stance attached to any­thing that he has accom­plished that was tru­ly ben­e­fi­cial to the wel­fare of the peo­ple of this coun­try or Kentucky.  Yes, he was like­ly respon­si­ble for get­ting a largesse of mon­ey sent to Kentucky from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, but that’s some­thing that Kentuckians expect from whomev­er they send to Washington. There is the ques­tion if any of those funds would have been avail­able if they didn’t rep­re­sent some form of advan­tage to him. If Kentucky was espe­cial­ly anoint­ed with fed­er­al funds under his tenure, it is only because of his lengthy term, not because of any spe­cial generosity.

Let’s review some of Mitch’s accomplishments.

From the very begin­ning he was opposed to the Affordable Care Act, a law that has kept sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand Kentuckians out of abject pover­ty or with­out med­ical care. Maybe his objec­tions to this act were sim­ply because it came from President Obama. You remem­ber Obama. Mitch declared that his main goal was to see that Obama was a one-term pres­i­dent.  (You botched that one, Mitch.)

(There’s an inter­est­ing side note to the ACA.  Several years ago, short­ly after the ACA was enact­ed – with­out Mitch’s sup­port – a poll was tak­en in which respon­dents were asked if they were in favor of “Obamacare.” Responses were almost uni­ver­sal­ly neg­a­tive, with sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­ages against it.  When the same respon­dents were asked if they sup­port­ed the Affordable Care Act, the respons­es were reversed! Just shows how labels matter.)

The Senator has been con­sis­tent­ly against any­thing designed to improve the envi­ron­ment.  In 2020 the League of Conservation Voters gave him a life­time rat­ing of 7%, among the worst in the Senate.

McConnell was instru­men­tal in get­ting con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices appoint­ed to the Supreme Court (as well as many fed­er­al court judges) and one of the pri­ma­ry results of that (when Samuel Alito replaced Sandra O’Connor), was the rul­ing in Citizens United declar­ing cor­po­ra­tions as “peo­ple,” open­ing the flood­gates of cor­po­rate mon­ey into polit­i­cal campaigns.

Our senior sen­a­tor sup­port­ed NAFTA, the trade agree­ment that sucked jobs out of this coun­try and caused the shut­down of Fruit of the Loom fac­to­ries in sev­er­al Kentucky coun­ties, which have yet to recov­er the thou­sands of jobs that went south.  Remember Ross Perot’s allu­sion to “that suck­ing sound” from south of the border?

When those who say they vot­ed for, or are like­ly to vote for McConnell, because of what he has done for Kentucky, ask them to name some­thing, any­thing, that fits that cat­e­go­ry and that did not ben­e­fit him as well.

In 2014 McConnell was named the NRA’s “Defender of Freedom,” per­haps because of his con­stant refusal to allow gun con­trol leg­is­la­tion to come to the Senate floor.

The final (we thought at the time) indig­ni­ty that McConnell brought to his office was his denial of the appoint­ment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court at the end of President Obama’s term.  McConnell delib­er­ate­ly held up hear­ings on Garland for over nine months, claim­ing that the President should not be allowed an appoint­ment dur­ing his last year in office. This was unprece­dent­ed and has brought undy­ing shame on him for it, cer­tain­ly an act for which he will be remem­bered by many, since it result­ed in the Dobb’s deci­sion upend­ing abor­tion rights. And his reluc­tance to bring up Garland’s nom­i­na­tion didn’t deter him from rush­ing through the nom­i­na­tion of Amy Comer Barrett just 58 days before Biden was elect­ed in November of 2020.

But just when it might have been thought that he couldn’t do any­thing more egre­gious, he comes to the end of his posi­tion as minor­i­ty leader with an endorse­ment of a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date who has already been deemed by pres­i­den­tial schol­ars as the worst pres­i­dent in his­to­ry and who has declared that he will par­don those serv­ing prison sen­tences for the assault on the Capitol on January 6^th, 2021, the moment when McConnell was cow­er­ing in the base­ment along with his col­leagues. Apparently, Mitch has for­got­ten his dec­la­ra­tion that Trump was “prac­ti­cal­ly and moral­ly respon­si­ble” for the events of that day. (Although to be fair, he has tried to rec­on­cile his endorse­ment by refer­ring back to his January 25^th com­ment that he would sup­port the party’s nom­i­nee.) His con­science must be doing flip-flops on that one.

Some have labeled McConnell a “leader.”  A true leader has qual­i­ties that obvi­ous­ly don’t reside with the Senator. In fact, he could be more accu­rate­ly described as “a wind sock,” some­one who moves with whichev­er way the wind is blow­ing when those gusts work to his own advantage.

Only twelve sen­a­tors have ever served longer than Mitch McConnell and if he remains to the end of his present term in 2026, he will over­take three of those.  It’s hard to believe that the founders ever con­sid­ered a posi­tion in gov­ern­ment to be a life­time com­mit­ment.  In fact, Jefferson com­ment­ed, “Whenever a man has cast a long­ing eye on [offices] a rot­ten­ness begins in his conduct.” 

How appro­pri­ate.

So, for all those who want to heap plau­dits on the Senator, please do so else­where.  I’m not buying.