The Price of Power: How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America, and Lost His Party
Michael Tackett (Simon & Schuster, $44, 397 pages)
Michael Tackett’s The Price of Power is a mainstream journalist’s fair-minded account of one of the most important elected figures in U.S. history, a man whose mastering of Senate procedures led him to command and control his party for nearly two decades as the Republican leader in the Senate for 17 years by leveraging campaign fundraising, candidate selection, and appointments. From humble roots that included being stricken with polio to his rise in local Kentucky politics, everything McConnell experienced disciplined him to become a master legislator: a reticent demeanor, patience, diplomacy, strategic brilliance. Tackett ably describes the travails of McConnell’s ascension from rural Alabama to the halls of the world’s most important deliberative body, Congress. McConnell was cagey – early in his career, it was unknown whether he was pro-life or pro-abortion – and he had a reputation for being moderate and pragmatic. But as Tackett illustrates, his legacy is one of championing conservative causes in order to advance the Republican Party politically: defending free speech, especially by deflecting attacks on it by campaign finance reform schemes, and a commitment to get originalists on the Supreme Court by blocking Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland in 2016 and shepherding Trump’s three appointees during the president’s first term. That resulted in the overturn of Roe but it also made the 2016 election about the Supreme Court, more favourable ground for the Republicans than Democrats at the time. McConnell may be the most influential politician between Reagan and Trump, presidencies that his time in the Senate spanned. His superpower, Tackett describes, is that “he does not care what people think about him” and he’s “not weakened by temporary needs like getting applause” – traits more conservative politicians should adopt.
