McConnell takes the reins as Senate majority leader

James R. Carroll | The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal

WASHINGTON — Three decades after arriving in the capital city as the junior senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell on Tuesday became the U.S. Senate's majority leader and, with House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, one of the two most powerful Republicans in the nation.

McConnell, 72, grasped his life's political ambition shortly after noon when the new senators for the 114th Congress were sworn in in groups of four by Vice President Biden.

"Mr. President, can we have order?" were McConnell's first words as majority leader. He addressed the request to Biden, who gaveled the chatty chamber back to order.

Later, McConnell offered brief remarks, promising a longer address Wednesday.

"A new Republican majority has accepted its new responsibility," McConnell told his colleagues. "We recognize the enormity of the task before us. We know a lot of hard work awaits."

But, he said, "I'm really optimistic about what we can accomplish."

Widely acknowledged as a skilled strategist and tactician with a keen sense of Senate history, McConnell captains a 54-seat Republican majority that, with the GOP-led House, now controls the legislative branch of the federal government.

In an interview with The Courier-Journal in his spacious leadership office in the Capitol, McConnell was characteristically reserved about the biggest day of his political life.

"I'm pleased to be the majority leader of the Senate," he said matter-of-factly. "But I really don't think this is the day for measuring the drapes or for irrational exuberance."

Instead, McConnell said, it is a time "to do some serious business."

His first foray into that business, pushing legislation to clear construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, ran into immediate procedural objections from Senate Democrats and a veto threat from the White House.

Asked about White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest's comment Tuesday that starting out with Keystone raises questions about the GOP's willingness to work with President Obama, McConnell insisted the majority of Americans want the project.

"The president has been playing with this issue for five years — five years," he said. "Every environmental review they've given it has come back positive. We know it would create literally thousands of jobs almost immediately."

The veteran Kentucky lawmaker has signaled that he intends to exercise his power both in the interests of achieving legislative breakthroughs on issues like job creation and trade, and in the service of his party, of reclaiming the White House in 2016.

McConnell is being careful not to set expectations too high, given that it will take at least six Democratic senators to reach the required 60 votes to pass major legislation in the Senate.

"The thought that we can just sort of steamroll the (Democratic) minority is not accurate," he said.

However, the pressure will be on GOP lawmakers to craft some legislative accomplishments, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

"In the end, what matters is what the Senate produces or doesn't produce," he said. "To be able to set the (legislative) schedule to the average voter means nothing.

"At the end of Congress, Republicans have to be able to point to some achievements, otherwise they're in for another unpleasant campaign about another do-nothing Congress," Sabato said.

But that is for another day.

McConnell's first day as majority leader was taken up with the more mundane concerns of organizing the Senate for the next two years.

In a finely tuned bit of procedural choreography, McConnell put the Senate in a quorum call, submitted a resolution notifying Obama that a quorum of the Senate had assembled, submitted a resolution electing Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch president pro tempore of the Senate, and submitted more resolutions on the choosing of various Senate staffers and officers.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., conveyed his "very best" to McConnell and reminded colleagues that a former minority leader, Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., once said: "I am a man of fixed and unbending principle, the first of which is to be flexible at all times."

That drew laughter in the chamber, but Durbin added that "what we are about is honorable compromise."

"The American people need for us to work together to solve problems and create opportunities," he said.

McConnell's predecessor and sometime political sparring partner, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was not on the Senate floor for the leadership change. He was in Washington but is under doctor's orders not to come into the office. Reid is recovering from broken bones in his face, three broken ribs and a concussion he recently received in an exercise accident.

McConnell noted his political opponent is a former boxer.

"He's tough. I know he'll be back in fighting form soon enough. I wish him a speedy recovery," McConnell said.

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