The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell: on Principles & Values
I only talk to press if it's to my advantage
Over the three decades I have been a US senator, I've been the subject of many profiles. I usually play the villain, according to the standard good guy/bad guy accounts favored by most
Washington reporters. The more positive ones tend to focus on my ability to broker deals with supposed adversaries, keep my head when others don't, win elections I'm not supposed to.
Until now though, no one has tried to write the story on me the way I see it, which is really my doing. I only talk to the press if it's to my advantage, and
I always discourage my staff from revealing details of meetings with presidents and other public figures.
Source: The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell, p.1
May 31, 2016
OpEd: Obama tries to make you think he's smartest in room
A lot of people ask me what President Obama is really like. I tell everyone the same thing. He's no different in private than in public. He's like the kid in class who exerts a hell of a lot of effort to make sure everyone knows he's the smartest one in
the room. He talks down to people, whether addressing the nation, in a meeting with colleagues, or addressing the White house. And he's simply a very liberal guy who's determined to move the country toward the kind of progressive ideal that Western
European societies embraced decades ago. He has a bold progressive agenda, and if he can't get what he wants through the legislative branch, he'll do so through bureaucracy. For someone who came up through the senate, the presidents influence (or
hostility, depending on how you look at it) to Congress is curious. Knowing I could do little to change his perspective on things, my goal has been to stop him when I think he's pushing ideas that are bad for the country.
Source: The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell, p.185
May 31, 2016
Wanting Obama to be one-term president taken out of context
I told a reporter on Oct. 23, 2010, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one term president." I then went on to explain that if Obama did what Clinton had done--decide after the elections that he was
willing to move toward the political center and meet Republicans half way on some of the biggest issues facing our nation--we'd do business with him. "I don't want him to fail. I want him to change."Well, I've been taken out of context in the past,
but never more relentlessly. Over the next few months every Democrat reminded people Mitch McConnell said his greatest legislative goal is to make Barack Obama a one term president. People falsely claimed I made the comment immediately after Obama was
elected--framing my statement as proof that before anything else, I was out to obstruct the president and cause him to fail--when the truth was that I made it after he had jammed past the healthcare bill and the stimulus.
Source: The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell, p.202-203
May 31, 2016
OpEd: McConnell can work with Biden; he talks AND listens
I learned that Joe didn't only talk, he also listened. He was, therefore, someone I could work with. A few months earlier, he and I successfully negotiated a means to address the rise in taxes, with the scheduled December 10 expiration of the Bush-era
tax cuts. Allowing these cuts to expire would have meant significant tax increase for every American taxpayer. After others have tried and failed for months to negotiate a solution, Joe and I had been able to do so in days. The reason we could get a
deal done, and I could work with Joe, was that we could talk to one another. I could tell him how far we could go, and he would reciprocate, unlike Obama. The president's way of interacting and negotiating was utterly unproductive. Joe, on the other
hand, made no effort to convince me I was wrong, or that I held an incorrect view. He took my politics as a given, and I did the same, which was what allowed us to successfully negotiate when it came to our discussion on taxes in 2010.
Source: The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell, p.209-210
May 31, 2016
Liberalism has contempt not gratitude for the past
Difference is not something to be stamped out. It is something to be confronted and mediated in a way that's broadly acceptable to the public.
And I think we've come a long way. In the end, the goal isn't a perfectly running congressional machine or a party without blemish or inner turmoil.
The goal is for the country to work out it's differences freely and energetically, confident that the institutions the founders left us are capable of confronting the disputes and disagreements that arise in a nation as
big and diverse and open as ours.So much of liberalism seems rooted not in gratitude, but in contempt for the past. It's one of the dividing lines between progressivism on one hand and conservatism on the other.
Source: The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell, p.257
May 31, 2016
OpEd: Steely determination to do what's right
I was in my seat on the senate floor when Senator Collins began to speak. It was a privilege to be on hand to witness this historic event. Senator Collins wound up giving one of the greatest speeches in the annals of the senate.
She discussed in dispassionate terms, the issues of the senate on the issues regarding the Kavanagh vote. In the end she concluded that he deserved to be confirmed. Through her speech and her vote,
Senator Collins displayed to her Nation the same traits that her colleagues in the Senate and the citizens of Maine have long known, she possesses a steely determination to do what she thinks is right. This was not an easy position for her because she
hails from a liberal state, and she and her staff were subjected to numerous intimidation tactics from the left. Coming on the heels of her speech, Kavanaugh was confirmed the next day.
Source: The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell, p.275
May 31, 2016
Page last updated: Nov 25, 2021