I do not understand why so many pundits wax lyrical about McConnell's experience. “McConnell has studied Senate procedure firsthand over five decades,” raved Mike DeBonis in the Washington Post. Just because he’s been there longer than the light bulbs doesn’t mean he’s any brighter.
While we’d expect him to know the basics of Senate procedures by now, yet there’s no indication that he studied them so much as he just became familiar with the routine. There’s a big difference between the two but apparently it’s one that escapes reporters like Mike DeBonis who was evidently desperate to balance McConnell’s obvious ineptitude with something that sounded strong and leadershippy.
DeBonis failed. McConnell’s ineptitude stood out a mile. It’s not the first time.
Let’s take a look at how he’s fared over the first quarter of the 114th Congress.
Ever since taking over the mantle of Majority Leader, McConnell has struggled with the job. Even though he’s been lowering the bar month by month, he's still unable to make the grade and his party isn't helping.
First up: funding Homeland Security. Well that quickly devolved into a crisis situation – and it got worse, thanks to the new Senate Majority Leader.
McConnell’s idea of caring and sharing with House Republicans was a half day training session on the way the Senate works, as if they didn’t know already. (To be fair, some really didn’t know and it’s pretty much the same ones who can’t figure out how the House works either.) The House Republicans were understandably insulted by this treatment and dug their heels in. Predictably that fanned the flames of a bitter feud between House and Senate Republicans, a state which festers below the surface to this day.
People Skills: D–
Boehner had set up this particular game of chicken and he made sure McConnell would be the first to blink (he was). However, the real victors were ultimately the Democrats who got the clean bill they wanted, and subsequently passed, in both chambers.
Political Tactics: D–
McConnell was one of the infamous GOP 47 who foolishly signed Senator Cotton’s open letter to unnamed persons in Iran. He then hid out from reporters for over a week until CNN finally tracked him down. “I didn’t think it was a mistake,” he told the State of the Union audience.
Really?
In The Nation, Jim Lobe wrote:
It was especially embarrassing not only because Cotton graduated from Harvard Law School, but also because Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who earned an MA and PhD in International Law at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver — Condoleezza Rice’s alma mater — felt compelled to correct Cotton’s understanding of Washington’s international legal obligations.
McConnell assured CNN he’d read the letter but, if he had, why didn’t he pick up on any of the many mistakes Tom Cotton made? He also failed to advise Cotton to address the letter to specific persons as is protocol for official communications – Cotton had used official Senate letterhead after all. Surely McConnell noticed that.
Knowledge of the Constitution, presidential powers, and international law: D–
Attention to detail: E–
Leadership in international affairs: F
Infrastructure is the vital circulatory system of every nation. Republicans know this yet are ignoring the alarming signs of poor maintenance. The latest to hit the headlines is the atrocious condition of the Memorial Bridge in DC. Yet McConnell elected to kick the can down the road (yet again) when it came time to refurbish the Highway Trust Fund. It was due to run out May 31. It’s been given a two-month stay and is likely to be kicked even further down the road come July, probably all the way to January 2017 at this rate. Why? Because the Republicans cannot decide how to fund it – just as they cannot agree on immigration reform or healthcare or any other vital program.
Caucus agreement on major issues: F
Senator Bob Corker called the Highway Trust Fund the “first test” for the GOP after winning Senate majority and excoriated his own party for their failure. “The writing is on the wall,” he said. “I will be stunned if Republicans deal with Highway Trust Fund responsibly. It’s not going to happen.” No it didn’t happen and he bemoaned the perpetual postponements as "so incredibly irresponsible, total failure, abdication of leadership.”
Abdication of leadership? That would be McConnell again.
Funding vital programs: D–
So we come to McConnell’s latest attempt to take charge of the Senate. His plan was to extend the misnamed Patriot Act as is, without change. His expectations, however, were dashed by none other than the junior senator from his home state, Rand Paul.
To fully appreciate how devastating this was for McConnell, it is necessary to understand that he and Paul had formed a tight friendship over the last five years. He’d even formally endorsed Paul’s presidential bid.
What did Paul do? On Wednesday May 20, without giving any prior warning to McConnell, Paul launched into a faux filibuster lasting almost 11 hours. His subject was opposition to any extension of the current surveillance law which was all well and good except... at the time, senators were working through complex trade legislation that McConnell had promised to pass by week’s end. From McConnell’s perspective, it was tedious and annoying but his aides played down the episode because ultimately it didn’t delay the trade bill, which passed a final vote the following Friday evening.
But that mistimed non-filibuster was just the beginning. Paul followed it up with what the Washington Post described as “a dramatic series of procedural maneuvers” with which Paul “dashed McConnell’s public pledge to extend a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program beyond a June 1 deadline before the Senate left for a week-long holiday break.”
Mike DeBonis described the scene:
Mitch McConnell stood at his desk on the Senate floor after 1 a.m. Saturday, the eyes of his colleagues trained on him. He seemed bewildered. “Enter your motion to reconsider,” Laura Dove, his chief floor aide, told the majority leader, the exchange audible throughout the chamber. “You need to enter your motion to reconsider.”
That is not the reaction of a leader who is fully in charge of the situation. That is the dumbstruck inertia of the dumbfounded. In that moment, McConnell was found wanting and it was his erstwhile friend Rand Paul who had brought him undone, in front of everyone.
McConnell managed to pull himself together enough to announce that the Senate would return a day early for a special session on Sunday May 31. But that was more a punishment than a plan. It couldn’t – and didn’t – help McConnell at all. He lost. The three provisions of the Patriot Act which he’d expected to save and extend, were allowed to expire instead.
Rand Paul breezily declared that he didn’t think his maneuvers had hurt his friendship with McConnell at all. A spokesman for McConnell just brushed it off as the two men having different opinions on the Patriot Act. McConnell said... nothing - and he said nothing with such force and ferocity it echoed around DC and all the way back to Kentucky.
It was Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Minority Leader Harry Reid, who really nailed it. “Senator McConnell badly misjudged the members of his own conference and failed to listen to advice from Senator Reid and others who saw this mess coming weeks ago and tried to warn him.” He added, “This mess is an entirely predictable consequence of Senator McConnell’s bad habit of governing by manufactured crisis.”
Misplaced arrogance: A
Governing by contrived crisis: D–
Interpersonal skills: E
Judgement: F
McConnell’s poor leadership didn't show before because he's really good at obstruction and that’s all he needed to do as minority leader. But now he's supposed to govern, he has no idea how to do it. He can't even command respect and cooperation from the junior senator (and best friend) of his own state. He’s lost whatever control he had which, as it’s turned out, was a mere mirage anyway. Whenever they like, his members will know they can now run roughshod over him, especially the four presidential candidates as they vie to take points from each other and anybody else who happens to get in their way. This doesn't bode well for McConnell.
He's has been around the Senate since 1964 and a senator since 1985 but McConnell never learned how to be a leader. Some people just don’t have it in them.