Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell On “The Long Game”

[Valin]

Hugh Hewitt Show:

Hugh Hewitt

Monday, May 30, 2016

 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell joined me for a long conversation Monday about his new, very entertaining –and important– memoir, The Long Game.

 

 

 

Audio Part 1

 

Audio Part 2

 

(Snip)

 

HH: Let’s come back to that. I want to make sure we get people the background on The Long Game. They’ve got to read this book. I think it may be the first Senate memoir I’ve ever read that is actually worth reading. I don’t mean to offend anyone out there who’s written another one, but this is more political science and history than it is just first person, though there is a lot of interesting first person in here, Senator McConnell. Let me start with the job. Before you, there was Bill Frist and Trent Lott, and before them was Bob Dole and Howard Baker, and I doubt if anyone’s going to remember Hugh Scott. I barely do. I don’t remember Everett Dirksen. There are so many different kinds of leaders out there that, you’re, everyone reinvents the office. But I think a lot of Republican angst grew up under Senators Lott and Frist, because they were so non-combative. Now “Mitch-slapping” is a term of art, and you do get combative when you want to. But do you agree with my assessment that a lot of the Republican angst in the country is because of the perceived non-combativeness of its leadership in D.C.?

 

MM: You know, I don’t know. I think some of the upset that people have is related to the fact that they aren’t fully focusing on the fact that there is a president under our system. People need to understand that there’s a limit to what you can do when you don’t have the White House. I think of, for example, the suggestion of some that we shut down the government in order to defund Obamacare, what my friend, George Will, called the politics of futile gesture. In other words, you set up a mission that can’t possibly be achieved. And then when it isn’t achieved, rather than blaming the guy in the White House, blaming people like John Boehner or Paul Ryan or me for being insufficiently committed to the cause. I think people need to remember the presidency is a very, very important position. Most things we do require presidential signature. There’s one thing that doesn’t, and that’s filling a Supreme Court vacancy, which I’m sure we’ll get to at some point here. But we can’t completely change the country and go in a different direction without somebody different in the White House.

 

HH: I agree with this. The only part of the book I may disagree with you on in tone is on Page 205 when you call Speaker John Boehner “a top notch guy.” Personally, I’m sure he’s a wonderful guy. But in the five years of his speakership, he never appeared on the radio with me. He never kind of engaged. You know, you go out and you fight the public opinion battle. The Dean Martin Republicans don’t fight the public opinion battle, and I think that’s what tore the party asunder and made way for Donald Trump. And by the way, we’ll get to that as well. But my question goes to the sort of balance you have to strike. I think you are combative. You get out there and you fight tooth and nail with these people. But maybe Trent Lott didn’t do so much of that, and certainly Senator Frist, wonderful man that he is, heart surgeon, I know you have a special place in your heart for heart surgeons. I didn’t know you had all the bypass surgery. We have to talk about that as well. But combativeness is part of the job of leadership, isn’t it?

 

MM: It is. I think you need to do it with class, you know, as a say, with a scalpel, not a meat axe.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

Mitch McConnell’s Memoir Reveals Tactician’s Approach to Politics
CARL HULSE
JUNE 3, 2016

WASHINGTON — Once, when Mitch McConnell was dishing privately to me on the congressional crisis of the moment, I thanked him for his candor and insight.

“Well,” he said in his distinctive drawl, “you know I’m only telling you this because it helps me.”

I did know. But it also helped me as a reporter. Still, even given my long experience with the canny Kentucky Republican, I was a little surprised to see this frank admission on the first page of his new memoir, “The Long Game”:

“I only talk to the press if it’s to my advantage,” Mr. McConnell wrote, putting it more bluntly than most politicians, even the ones who see it the same way.

 

(Snip)