In 1964, an ambitious young student at the University of Louisville made an impassioned plea to his classmates, urging them to march in solidarity with Martin Luther King Jr. At the time, Kentucky was no haven for race reformers—it was dominated by some of the same elements of the Democratic Party that vehemently rejected the very notion of civil rights. Nevertheless, this 20-year-old activist called for strong statutes, state and federal, to protect the dignity of minorities. “Property rights have always been, and will continue to be, an integral part of our heritage,” he wrote in the campus newspaper, “but this does not absolve the property holder of his obligation to help ensure the basic rights of all citizens.” The student’s name was Mitch McConnell.
Then, as now, McConnell was a dedicated Republican, but in his younger days, he was also a very high-minded one. As an up-and-coming activist, he declined to work on Barry Goldwater’s reactionary presidential campaign. Instead, his biographer, John David Dyche, told me, he advocated for the civil rights supporter Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. His role model was Kentucky Republican Senator John Sherman Cooper, an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war who helped defeat a filibuster of the Civil Rights Act. He admired Lyndon Johnson’s legislative mastery, Dyche said, and believed politics could serve a larger purpose.
Nearly 50 years later, very few people in Washington would accuse McConnell of idealism. As one veteran Kentucky journalist explained, Democrats regard the Senate minority leader as “the ultimate Machiavelli,” and with good cause. From the stimulus bill, to the 2011 debt-ceiling debacle (and its ultimate consequence, sequestration), to four years of stalled judicial nominations, McConnell’s relentless obstructionism has mired the president in low approval ratings. There is no one the administration blames more for its troubles. And yet, when you consider McConnell’s many small victories from another angle, they can start to look like defeats—not just for his own onetime dreams of statesmanship, but for the long-term future of the Republican Party.
McConnell is often described as driven—after overcoming polio at the age of five, he threw himself into competitive sports. Following six years in Jefferson County government, he ran for the Senate in 1984. His campaign unleashed ads depicting a pack of bloodhounds chasing his opponent, who was supposedly running from his record. By the end of one ad, the poor guy had sought refuge up a tree, dogs snarling savagely at his heels. It was a pretty good metaphor for the ruthlessness that would come to define McConnell’s Senate career.
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