Learning from honest cynic Mitch McConnell

By Ezra Klein,
WashPost
Published: June 27

When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks, I’ve learned to listen. It’s not that the jowly Kentuckian is such an inspiring orator. Quite the opposite, in fact. With his sleepy drone and laconic rhythm, he’s the rare politician who usually seems to be boring even himself. Nor is he the back-slapping, yarn-spinning sort that frequently prospers in the Senate. McConnell’s got all the warmth of an ice floe.

But then, McConnell doesn’t need to be inspiring or jocular. Shouldn’t be, in fact. What he’s saying isn’t inspirational or funny. It’s grim and divisive. And that’s why it’s so important. In a city split between liars and idealists, McConnell is the rarest of all things: an honest cynic. He’s the only powerful politician in America willing to tell you how Washington actually works, and that’s why he needs to be heard.

McConnell’s first brush with radical truth-telling came in October 2010, when he told National Journal that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” McConnell quickly qualified his remarks, although he never quite apologized for them.

Nor should he have. McConnell wasn’t articulating a radical new theory of politics. He was telling us how he and his party were already voting. Consider the dozens of elected Republicans who, at one time or another, supported an individual mandate for health-care reform, cap-and-trade for carbon emissions and tax cuts for stimulative purposes. Over the past three years, almost all of them have renounced their former views. Unless you understand McConnell’s argument, you can’t understand their actions.

(More here.)