

Robert B. Reich: How Mitch McConnell killed the Senate

Congress has recessed for two weeks without passing a desperately needed disaster relief bill. Why not? Because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn't want to anger Donald Trump by adding money for Puerto Rico that Democrats have sought but Mr. Trump doesn't want.

America used to have a Senate. But under Mr. McConnell, what was once known as the world's greatest deliberative body has become a partisan lap dog.

Recently, Mr. McConnell used his Republican majority to cut the time for debating Mr. Trump's court appointees from 30 hours to two, thereby enabling Republicans to ram through even more Trump judges.

In truth, Mr. McConnell doesn't give a fig about the Senate, or about democracy. He cares only about partisan wins.

On the eve of the 2010 midterm elections, Mr. McConnell famously declared that his top priority was for Barack Obama "to be a one-term president."

From 2009 to 2013, Mr. McConnell's Senate Republicans blocked 79 Obama nominees. In the entire history of the United States until that point, only 68 presidential nominees had been blocked.


In response, Mr. McConnell fumed that "breaking the rules to change the rules is un-American." If so, McConnell is about as un-American as they come. Once back in control of the Senate, he buried Mr. Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court by refusing even to hold hearings.

Then, in 2017, Mr. McConnell and his Republicans changed the rules again, ending the use of the filibuster even for Supreme Court nominees and clearing the way for Senate confirmation of Trump nominees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Step by step, Mr. McConnell has sacrificed the Senate as an institution to partisan political victories.

There is a vast difference between winning at politics by playing according to the norms of our democracy and winning by subverting those norms.

To Abraham Lincoln, democracy was a covenant linking past and future. Political institutions, in his view, were "the legacy bequeathed to us."


Knowing he would be criticized by other Republicans, Mr. McCain noted that over his career he had known senators who seriously disagreed with each other but nonetheless understood "they had an obligation to work collaboratively to ensure the Senate discharged its constitutional responsibilities effectively."

In words that have even greater relevance today, Mr. McCain added that "it is our responsibility to preserve that, even when it requires us to do something less satisfying than 'winning.'"

In politics, success should never be measured solely by one-sided partisan victories. It must also be judged by the institutional legacy passed onward. The purpose of political leadership is not merely to win. It is to serve.

In any social or political system it's always possible to extract benefits by being among the first to break widely accepted norms. In a small town where people don't lock their doors or windows, the first thief can effortlessly get into anyone's house. But once broken, the system is never the same. Everyone has to buy locks. Trust deteriorates.




In terms of shaping the federal courts, Mr. McConnell has played "the long game," which, incidentally, is the title of his 2016 memoir. Decades from now, Mr. McConnell will still be shaping the nation through judges he rammed through the Senate.

But Mr. McConnell's long game is destroying the Senate.

He is longest-serving leader of Senate Republicans in history, but Mitch McConnell is no leader. He is the epitome of unprincipled power. History will not treat him kindly.

