McConnell could chart new course in Senate
By Karen Tumulty
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 30, 2011
ELIZABETHTOWN, KY. - In the first two years of Barack Obama's
presidency, Mitch McConnell raised the art of obstructionism to new
levels. When McConnell and his united GOP troops couldn't stop things
from getting through the Senate, they made sure the Democrats paid a
heavy price for winning.
But now, the Senate minority leader who used to refer to himself as
"the abominable no-man" faces a very different challenge: Can he
actually deliver?
"The first two years, it was frankly pretty simple. From my point of
view, they didn't try to do anything in the political center in the
first two years, so there was no particular appeal" in trying to get
things done, McConnell said in an interview as he traveled his home
state during a recent recess. "The biggest difference will be deciding
when we are actually in a position to work with the administration -
and when we aren't."
Bipartisanship, of course, is just about everyone's favorite tune
these days. But for McConnell - who has some of the best tactical
instincts in modern Washington - the choices ahead are pivotal.
Having a new Republican majority in the House and six new GOP
senators, his hand is stronger. But with more power comes higher
expectations. The Republicans' political gains are fragile, and voters
- who have tossed a party out in each of the past three elections -
have shown they will not tolerate politicians who don't produce
results.
McConnell said the window for doing that is small, maybe six to nine
months, before the presidential campaign overtakes everything else.
The potential for doing business with the Obama administration is
there, however, as evidenced by the deal-making last month between
McConnell and Vice President Biden. It produced a tax cut - and
McConnell's first-ever invitation to a bill-signing ceremony at the
Obama White House, where the president lauded their "extraordinary
work."
The vice president and the GOP leader now speak frequently on the
phone. And on Feb. 11, Biden will join him for a conference on Senate
leadership at a location that is both close to McConnell's heart and a
beneficiary of his fundraising prowess: the University of Louisville's
McConnell Center.
It's a new relationship for a Republican leader who didn't have a
one-on-one meeting with the president until more than a year and a
half into Obama's term.
"It was just business. I wasn't relevant to their business in the
111th Congress and I understood that," McConnell said. "Things have
shifted."
At the same time, McConnell is crucial to pushing forward his own
party's conservative agenda. And he has said that ensuring that Obama
is a one-term president is his "top political priority."
While the new House speaker, John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), will probably
be able to get pretty much anything he wants in his chamber, the
Senate could be the burial ground for those initiatives. That was the
case the last time Republicans took charge of the House in 1995, even
though the GOP also held a narrow majority in the Senate.
Marshaling his troops is something McConnell did extraordinarily well
in the last Congress, when it took every one of his 41 members hanging
together to block things with a filibuster.
But now, said Republican Whip Jon Kyl (Ariz.), "we will have to go
more on offense."
In McConnell's view, that opportunity arises from the electoral map.
"Wholly aside from the Republicans, there may be Democrats anxious to
cooperate with us," the Republican leader said. "You've got 23 of them
up in 2012, a number of them in red states. They may be quite anxious
to look a lot more Republican in the next two years, which could mean
that we're not just talking about getting 41. We're talking about
getting 60."
Democrats are skeptical he will get far. "He's right there will be
members who will vote with his caucus on some issues," said Majority
Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). But Durbin noted that when Democratic
leaders last month polled their new caucus on the question of
repealing Obama's health-care law - which McConnell has vowed to bring
to a vote in the Senate - they were reassured to discover that "he
would not have received 50 votes."
A Senate Democratic leadership aide said that Majority Leader Harry M.
Reid (D-Nev.) finds McConnell hard to figure out because he is slow to
commit when they negotiate. "He does not show his hand," said the
aide, who was granted anonymity to speak freely.
"He's a very tough negotiator," agreed recently retired senator
Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who worked closely with McConnell on
politically sensitive legislation revamping election procedures in the
wake of the 2000 presidential recount. "But if he gives his word, it's
as good as anyone's in politics. I always found he was pretty good for
a handshake."
Even with greater numbers on his side, McConnell will have to contend
with tensions from within, especially with the tea party
reinforcements who have bolstered the ranks of a truculent
conservative wing. That faction on the right is unofficially led by
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who is often at odds with McConnell.
Tea partyers regard McConnell with some suspicion. In his home state's
Republican Senate primary last year, he made a rare break from
intraparty neutrality and supported the establishment pick, Kentucky
Secretary of State Trey Grayson, against their candidate - and the
ultimate victor -Rand Paul.
But even that was a characteristic act of calculation - albeit a wrong
one - for McConnell, who dominates his home-state politics as few
others senators have.
"A lot of it was concern about keeping the seat," acknowledged
Grayson, "and that if we lost a seat in his home state, it would
weaken him."
McConnell moved quickly, once the primary was over, to close ranks
with Paul. "He was able to put it aside," Grayson said. "If there's a
loss, he learns his lesson, and he moves on."
'Several moves ahead'
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Hard-line partisan or deft pragmatist? Master legislator or
win-at-any-cost hatchet man? In 41/2 terms in the Senate, McConnell
has been every one of those things, and sometimes all of them at once.
He is hard to get to know - even for his Senate colleagues - but those
on both sides of the aisle agree that McConnell is far more complex
than the opaque, purse-lipped image he deliberately presents.
"He's mean, smart and ruthless," said an Obama adviser, who did not
want to be quoted by name criticizing someone who could have so much
influence on the fate of the president's agenda.
"He's always thinking several moves ahead," said Sen. John Cornyn
(Tex.), who heads the Senate Republicans' campaign committee. "He has
learned the ways of the Senate to an extent that no one else I have
seen has. It's a combination of understanding the Senate and
understanding people."
"I wouldn't count him among the ideologues," said Sen. John F. Kerry
(D-Mass.). "He's a very practical person."
Yet some who have observed McConnell over the years wonder about his
principles. "He embraces the permanent campaign and the partisan war
very easily," said Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the
Brookings Institution. "There seems to be no second-thinking about
whether this is the right thing to do, or whether this is good for the
country."
The consummate Washington insider, McConnell is also something of a
homebody who seems to have little regard for the trappings of power.
His wife, former labor secretary Elaine Chao, said: "I call him my
low-maintenance husband. He does his own laundry. He goes grocery
shopping. He cooks - he's a better cook than I am."
McConnell says his character was shaped by an episode that he can't
even remember: a two-year battle against polio that began when he was
a toddler.
With his father fighting overseas in World War II, his desperate
mother took him to Warm Springs, Ga., where Franklin D. Roosevelt got
his physical therapy. She was told that she would have to keep her
only child from walking for two years, and to administer four
45-minute sessions of therapy each day, or he would live the rest of
his life in leg braces.
"I've always felt that it had a big impact on me in terms of focus,
discipline, and if you stick to it even under adverse circumstances,
you may succeed," he said. McConnell ultimately had a normal
childhood, and even played baseball. But colleagues say they notice he
does have difficulty walking downstairs.
As hard-nosed as he is about winning, McConnell sounds surprisingly
idealistic when he describes his days as a young congressional intern
and Senate aide in the 1960s.
It was a time when Congress got big things done by working across
party lines for a purpose larger than politics. McConnell, whose
father had served on the board of the Louisville Urban League,
recalled being on the Mall during the March on Washington in 1963,
though he was too far away to actually hear Martin Luther King Jr.'s
"I Have a Dream" speech. He witnessed the bipartisan effort it took to
break a Senate filibuster on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and
maneuvered himself "inconspicuously in the back of the room" when
Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in the Capitol Rotunda
in 1965.
"I thought it was a very inspiring place. I greatly admired a number
of the people that I observed as a lowly staffer," McConnell said. "I
decided I wanted to take a shot at it. I didn't know what the chances
would be or when the opportunity would come, but I decided I wanted to
see if maybe I could become a senator myself."
Learning how money talks
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The 1984 election produced a class of Senate freshmen heavy on
pedigree and political star power. Al Gore of Tennessee. John Kerry of
Massachusetts. Phil Gramm of Texas. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.
Tom Harkin of Iowa.
"I was kind of the accident," McConnell said. The new senator from
Kentucky, whose only previous elected office had been county
executive, was known only for the expensive and brutal campaign ad
that got him elected.
Produced by former Nixon media adviser and future Fox News President
Roger Ailes, the spot featured a pack of baying bloodhounds on the
hunt for the sitting Democrat, Walter "Dee" Huddleston, as an
announcer accused him of missing votes to pick up big speaking fees in
exotic locales. McConnell had been more than 30 points down when he
put the ad on the air, but it transformed the race.
When early polls came in showing McConnell on the verge of becoming
the first Republican to win statewide in Kentucky in 16 years, "the
word was that the champagne corks were being popped all over
Washington," he recalled. "They figured if Mitch McConnell was
winning, we must be in the middle of a landslide."
In fact, Republicans lost a seat that year, and McConnell turned out
to be the only one to beat a Democratic incumbent. His early
experience taught McConnell two things that have guided him since: the
value of money in politics, and the power of going negative.
He would develop an expertise in campaign finance law and devote much
of his career to blocking restrictions on political money - an issue
that had relatively little resonance with the public at large, but one
that his colleagues regard as their political lifeblood.
"This is an issue on which he made his bones internally in the
Senate," said Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer, a leading
activist for campaign finance reform who opposed McConnell. "It has
been central to his career in the Senate and his rise to Senate
Republican leader."
McConnell's first leadership post, as head of the campaign committee,
also put him in charge of fundraising. That money built a reservoir of
gratitude among his colleagues. But McConnell also immersed himself in
the institution itself: its rhythms, its rivalries, its arcane
procedures. He keeps confidences close, and spreads credit widely.
If McConnell has a role model in the job, he said, it is, ironically
enough, a Democrat - the fiercely partisan and intensely disciplined
George J. Mitchell, who served as majority leader from 1989 to 1995.
And unlike many other Senate leaders, McConnell never entertained
presidential ambitions. "It is somewhat helpful to have just one
agenda," he said.
But while that agenda may be shifting, the Senate Republican leader's
focus hasn't.
"I have a lot of discussions with the White House that I didn't used
to have. I think we'll have a lot more interaction," McConnell said.
"They have obviously decided they are going in a different direction.
When they basically adopt our positions, I expect we'll have a lot of
interaction."
More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/29/AR2011012904547_4.html
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
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