When Mitch McConnell, majority leader of the U.S. Senate, accused those questioning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of playing politics with the nomination, his was the voice of experience.

For me, it was McConnell’s third strike. Actually, it was after the third strike, but you’re only allowed three strikes.

To be sure, Kavanaugh meets the professional and intellectual standards of a Supreme Court Justice. The issue raised by Christine Blasey Ford was his moral fitness to rise to the court. And McConnell made it clear that moral fitness does not matter to him and, presumably, to the majority he commands in the Senate.

This is standard operating procedure for McConnell, who has been in the Senate for 34 years. A Republican operative in McConnell’s home state, Kentucky, said, “No Republicans even like McConnell. But McConnell makes you dislike the other person so much, you’re like, ‘Holy crap, there’s no way I can vote for that person!’”

McConnell’s first strike was when he said in 2010 that the Republican Party’s main goal was ensuring that Barack Obama was a one-term president. So, how did that work out?

It worked out to eight years of gridlock in “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” as James Buchanan, our 15th president, called the Senate more than 170 years ago. Buchanan had served more than two terms in the Senate, back when its members were elected by state legislators. He had been a Republican-Federalist after the Federalist Party collapsed, then became a Democrat loyal to President Andrew Jackson.

No doubt, Obama and his people were pretty arrogant about having defeated Sen. John McCain in the presidential election of 2008. “Elections have consequences,” Obama was quoted as telling a group of Republican leaders early in 2009. “And I won.” But to bring the government to a halt because the voters hurt your feelings is a bit extreme, don’t you think? And the statement was true, regardless of whether it was politic.

McConnell’s second strike. He smashed that notion that the Senate is “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016, nearly nine months before a presidential election, the Senate might have been expected to swing into action. The Constitution, which McConnell has sworn to uphold, calls for the Senate to “advise and consent” on nominations to the Supreme Court.

Obama picked Merrick Garland, a bit of a centrist and easily as qualified professionally and intellectually as Kavanaugh, but McConnell refused to allow the Senate to consider Garland’s nomination. And Garland’s background hid no suggestion of immorality. But, the nomination expired with Obama’s second term, opening the way for a relentless self-promoter to nominate two justices in his first two years as president.

The third strike was when McConnell assured a convention of so-called “values voters” that Kavanaugh would be confirmed to the court within days. McConnell pushed the Kavanaugh nomination through the Judiciary Committee hard and fast. Kavanaugh didn’t answer one question substantively in his first hearing, so there was no reason to expect him to answer the morality questions that arose later. And on Thursday, he didn’t.

When the accusation came from Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh had tried to sexually assault her in high school, it didn’t take long for McConnell to state, in effect, that Kavanaugh’s personal behavior did not matter. He told those so-called “values voters” — what voter doesn’t vote on the basis of her values? — that confirmation would come soon no matter what Blasey Ford testified. No need to wait for the evidence. McConnell had already decided to ignore her testimony.

McConnell was somewhat more interested in evidence 19 years ago when the Senate was called on, by that same Constitution, to convict or acquit President Bill Clinton of “high crimes and misdemeanors” after the House of Representatives had impeached him.

“We can do the right thing. Or we can lower our standards and allow Bill Clinton to cling to public office, regardless of the consequences to our nation, to our system of justice, and to our future generations,” McConnell told the Senate in 1999.

McConnell then quoted Richard Nixon, of all people. Nixon said about his fall from political grace, “You find you can’t stop playing the game the way you’ve always played it. So you are lean and mean and resourceful and you continue to walk on the edge of the precipice, because, over the years, you have become fascinated by how closely you can walk without losing your balance.” McConnell has lost any balance he might have had.

At least two writers apparently saw McConnell’s cynicism before I did. Jason Zengerle, in a long profile of McConnell in POLITICO, wrote, “He changed his political stripes on everything from campaign finance reform (once a supporter, he became its most outspoken opponent) to foreign policy (growing more hawkish).”

Alec MacGillis, a biographer, wrote, “Driven less by a shift in ideological conviction than by a desire to win elections and stay in power at all costs, McConnell’s transformation exemplifies the ‘permanent campaign’ mindset that has come to dominate American government.”

Henry Clay, who nearly 200 years ago occupied the Senate seat McConnell holds, famously said, “I had rather be right than be president.” If McConnell were to paraphrase Clay, he would have to say he would rather hang on to power than be right.

Bob Neal is a retired journalist and farmer who studied Henry Clay in school and university. He often wonders where Clay’s type of leadership went. And why.

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