‘The Price of Power:’ A long, objective look at Mitch McConnell by a veteran D.C. journalist
Republished from Kentucky Lantern
Mitch McConnell has been the subject of four biographies: one by himself, one by a critic, one by a friend who became a critic, and now, at last, one by a top-rank Washington journalist with an objective account of “one of the most consequential senators in American history,” as the dust jacket accurately puts it.
The book’s title is a good bumper-sticker summary: “The Price of Power: How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America and Lost His Party.” It’s by Michael Tackett, deputy Washington Bureau chief for The Associated Press, whose journalistic pedigree also includes stints at The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and other major news outlets.
In revealing detail, Tackett describes how McConnell slowly earned the respect and gratitude of his fellow Republican senators to become the longest-serving Senate leader of any party; gave us the most conservative Supreme Court in almost 90 years, doing away with federal abortion rights; then put himself in the minority of a party transformed by Donald Trump, with whom he has a contradictory relationship.
Tackett tells the story with the help of oral histories that McConnell has recorded each year, one of which dominated early news reports about the book. McConnell called Trump “a despicable human being” for delaying a pandemic relief package and said the president was “stupid as well as being ill-tempered, and can’t even figure out where his own best interests lie.”
McConnell said that after the Electoral College had decided the 2020 election and before the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, for which he later said Trump was “practically and morally responsible.” But then he voted against convicting Trump on impeachment, using the unproven legal argument that impeachment is not constitutional after the officeholder leaves office.
“There is ample debate about that point,” Tackett writes, “but for McConnell, as usual, the political rationale was sufficient.” As evidence, Tackett quotes from his interview with President Joe Biden, McConnell’s longtime Senate colleague: “I can understand the rationale – not agree with it – understand the rationale to say, ‘If I don’t do this, I may be gone’” – as the leader of Senate Republicans.
Tackett charitably attributes to McConnell an additional, broader goal, regaining the Senate majority: “He wanted the energy of Trump’s voters in Senate races, without the baggage of Trump. He gambled on his belief that Trump would fade from the political stage in the wake of the insurrection. Instead, Trump re-emerged every bit as strong among core supporters. It was likely the worst political miscalculation of McConnell’s career.”
The ultimate crucible
Seven Republicans in the 50-50 Senate voted to convict Trump; 10 more would have provided the two-thirds needed to convict — and on a second vote, to disqualify him from office. Tackett writes of McConnell, “He said he could not have persuaded enough Republicans to get the 67 votes needed. He chose not to try, and that choice meant that Trump could again become his party’s dominant and domineering force.”
That’s the closest we have come to discerning McConnell’s thinking in the ultimate crucible of his political career, when it collided with the nation’s best interests. Tackett strongly suggests that McConnell didn’t even try to persuade any of his colleagues, knowing from his years of experience with them that 10 could not be persuaded.
“He’s very fond of saying he doesn’t believe in futile gestures,” Tackett told me in an interview. “I didn’t find any evidence of direct persuasion.” But he acknowledged that closely held conversations among McConnell and his colleagues may remain so — and there’s a hint that McConnell held out hope of a conversion experience, maybe even one of his own.
Tackett reveals that as the vote neared, anti-Trump columnist George Will circulated to “a select group of conservatives” a draft column with the final sentence in brackets, pending events happening near his deadline, saying that McConnell had voted to convict. “Will had either been given an indication of McConnell’s vote,” Tackett writes, “or had made a surmise based on their long association.”
That was McConnell’s initial inclination, according to Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns’ “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” published in May 2022. They paraphrased McConnell as telling staffers soon after Jan. 6 that they would have to fight Trump politically, and that at least 17 Republicans would vote to convict — and suggesting he would be among them. But when it was reported that McConnell thought Trump’s offenses were impeachable, Senate Republicans told Martin that their leader hadn’t told any of them that.
It seems apparent that Republican senators saw polls, at least one of them public, that showed Trump losing little support among GOP voters after Jan. 6 while McConnell and Vice President Mike Pence, who had refused to help Trump overturn the election, lost much support.
Tackett’s treatment of this pivotal episode is less focused and dramatic than Martin’s, perhaps reflecting the understated, dispassionate approach of an expert observer who not only is objective (as Martin was) but wants to appear objective. That has become all the more difficult in political journalism, as audiences assume we write with motives other than to get at the truth and serve readers, so I salute Tackett’s approach.
The costs to McConnell?
Tackett, who had no previous dealings with McConnell, said getting his oral histories and other archives showed “He knew that for the project to be credible, it had to be objective.” We agreed that the 2010 John David Dyche biography of McConnell, “Republican Leader,” was more objective than most people thought at the time, given Dyche’s connections with the senator. Dyche has since broken publicly with McConnell over his lack of action against Trump.
Tackett said he hopes readers will “see this as an examination of how one acquires power, accumulates power and wields power, and at what consequence.”
And what prices has McConnell paid for power? They include a reputation for being interested more in power than in policy, or even the national interest — as illustrated by his endorsement of Trump this year, something he apparently thought he had to do to maintain influence in the Senate after announcing that he would step down as leader at the end of the year.
Tackett well notes McConnell’s contradictions, such as saying in his maiden speech as leader that “I will never agree to retreat from our responsibility to confirm qualified judicial nominees,” then nine years later refusing to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in an election year, and four years later doing exactly that, both times to serve political purposes.
There is much new in the book, such as Justice Sam Alito saying he’s on “the McConnell Court;” analyses of McConnell’s style by former House speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan; how he kept a presidential debate out of Louisville to steer a spotlight away from then-Mayor Jerry Abramson, a potential opponent; and the letter he got from close friend and federal Judge John Heyburn, advising him to cooperate with new President Barack Obama, which he famously did not do.
We also read how McConnell, who is proud that emotions have not driven his decision-making and is one of the least emotional politicians in public, can express great emotion in private. One example: sobbing when he reads an email congratulating him for becoming the longest-tenured Senate leader, something Tackett and I expect to be in the first line of his obituary.
And we learn much more about McConnell’s childhood and his mother, who helped him recover from polio. That experience developed his drive and ambition; Tackett writes that they were “fueled by the hyper-competitive instincts of an elite athlete, something he hoped to be but never could.”
Beyond McConnell’s early years in Louisville and its politics, this is not a Kentucky book. It doesn’t mention that he squeezed fellow Republican Sen. Jim Bunning out of another reelection bid or explain how he saved Bunning from defeat in 2004 and how he engineered Ron Lewis’ historic 1994 victory in the 2nd Congressional District. (The book has more detail on how McConnell helped Indiana Sen. Todd Young get elected in 2016.)
But McConnell is a national and international figure, and one who is not well understood. This book adds much to our knowledge. Now let’s hope that when he steps out of the leader’s box, he will be even more forthcoming.
Al Cross helped author Michael Tackett with fact-checking and offered other advice for the first half of the book. Cross is mentioned in the acknowledgements as one of eight people who “helped shape the narrative.” This column mainly addresses the book’s later chapters.
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