The NPR Politics Podcast - How Did Mitch McConnell Become One Of The Most Powerful People In The World?

Episode Date: June 5, 2019

Mitch McConnell has been described as "opaque," "drab," and even "dull." He is one of the least popular - and most polarizing - politicians in the country. So how did he win eight consecutive elections? And what does it tell us about how he operates? NPR's Embedded deep dived into the man and the politician. This episode: political correspondent Scott Detrow, Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and Embedded host Kelly McEvers. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, I'm Emmy Brown, and I'm from Lafayette, California, and I listened to the podcast probably too much for a 15-year-old. I'm about to go take my high school freshman year English final. Wish me luck. This podcast was recorded at... I feel like we'd be more helpful on this front if it was like a political or government final, but... I know, like go study for your final. It's 105 Eastern on Wednesday, June 5th. Please note that things may have changed since the time you hear this. All right, here's the show. I'm going to assume she did pretty well in her final.

It sounded like she would. Right. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover politics. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And we've got an extra special guest today, Kelly McEvers.

Hey, Kelly. Hey. Surprise special guest. Surprise. Just surprise. So this is a very NPR thing of blending the NPR Politics podcast with Embedded, your podcast. Let's take the NPR-iness up one notch. Let's definitely do that.

There is a thing on the internet of somebody posted, generate your NPR name by taking the last name of the author of the last book you read as your first name. And then your last name is the last street you went to in an Uber or Lyft. Can I just say, like, I love how, like, even NPR that is. Or Lyft. Or other rideshare device. Like authors and rideshares. What if you use bike share? Right?

I last went here on a scooter. Anyway, let's reintroduce ourselves with our proper NPR names, I think. We should do this. Yes. Everybody ready? Ready. Yeah. All right.

I'm Mantel Decatur. I cover politics. I'm Finn's Constitution. I cover Congress. I'm Muller Sunset, and I'm host of the Embedded Podcast. I can't even get through it. Those are all pretty solid NPR names. I just love the idea of living in the Mueller sunset.

Is that because the last book you read is Robert Mueller's report? Yes. Oh, that's even more NPR. I know. I know. All right. Well, Kelly, you are with us because you have once again dug into some political stories for your next series of episodes.

Before you did stories on like President Trump's inner circle and things like that, this time you chose a little bit of a different topic that might not be quite as obvious. That's right. Senator Mitch McConnell said, quote, The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president. Mitch McConnell's top priority is transforming the judiciary. Mitch McConnell called on lawmakers to move on from the Mueller report, arguing the case is closed. So, Kelly, Sue and I obviously spend a lot of time thinking about and covering and writing

about Mitch McConnell. But as you point out in this podcast, he is not like this charismatic figure. So I'm curious, what drew your attention to him and made you think, I want to go deep on Mitch McConnell? Yeah, why did we do that? I'm still trying to remember. No, because look, I mean, you know, you say to an average person,

like he's the Senate majority leader, but like, that's actually a really powerful job, right? He's a very, very, very influential person. And as I say in the podcast, whether you love him and you want him to stay in power forever, or you hate him and you want to defeat him in 2020 when he's up for reelection, like knowing how this guy plays the game is really important because it's a game that affects all of us. Sue, how would you put Mitch McConnell's role in the Capitol compared to previous people who have held his job? Oh, that's a really good question, because I think McConnell has been a transformative been defined by a level of polarization and divide in which the concept of this, you know, the world's greatest deliberative body where senators work together

to solve big policy issues, that's not really the game anymore. If anything, McConnell has kind of in the modern Senate made his brand about being the legislative graveyard, right? He is bragging about this right now, saying, I'm the Grim Reaper for all of these ideas that Democrats in the House are trying to move forward. And on the transformational side of it, it was also on his watch that they changed the rules of the Senate to not only make it easier for a president to confirm his Supreme Court judges,

but also all of the judges down the federal bench. So, Kelly, the first episode came out and you start with the thing that I think, you know, jumps out to a lot of people that this is someone who is not exactly like rousing passions from the speech. And yeah, and yet he's got this incredibly long, successful career winning election after election after election. So what's what's the secret? I mean, that's the interesting thing is that he knew from very early on that he wasn't charismatic, that he wasn't a back slapper. He wasn't the guy who's going to sit on the front porch and

smoke cigars and drink lemonade and tell you all kinds of stories to make you feel good, right? And so knowing that very early on and figuring out that there was going to have to be other ways that he was going to have to be other ways that he was going to have to win that, I think, in a way is his superpower. And that's something we learned by looking at his early career. So has McConnell ever really had a hard reelection or once he got to the seat, has he been has he been coasting from race to race? Yeah, you know, he has mostly had a pretty good reelection track record. I think in 2014, there was a sense in the beginning of this cycle that he could be beatable. You know, there are still a lot of Democrats, at least by voter registration in Kentucky.

So by the numbers, it's a state you would look at and think a Democrat could be more competitive there. These are kind of heritage Democrats, people that registered as Democrats a long time ago, but pretty consistently vote Republican. But they did, the last time Democrats made a real run at Kentucky was early in 2014. And they, Alison Lundergan Grimes, who was the then and now Secretary of State, won the nomination to take on McConnell. There was a sense she could try and make it competitive. Ultimately, in the end, he kicked her butt. I mean, I think he beat her in almost every county in the state. He won by, I think, a double-digit margin. It really kind of sent the message that Mitch McConnell was unbeatable in Kentucky.

I think Democrats are going to try again in 2020 because I think you can always raise a little bit of Democratic donor money to take on Mitch McConnell. It's going to be a hugely uphill battle. And one of the things that's so fascinating about 100 senators. He's always at the very bottom of the list. Kentucky, it's just one of these truisms that people don't really like Mitch McConnell, but they continue to vote for him. And that's something his people like to point out to us. It's like, you know, it doesn't really matter what the polls say, because every six years he takes his case to the people and the people make their decision. But there's another thing that he does very, very well and that he did very well in 2014. And that is raise money, right? Outraise his competitor. And that's another thing we look at in the series is that, you know, this is one of the things that Mitch McConnell has spent an inordinate amount of time working on in his political career is to make sure that money does flow into politics. Yeah, let's take a listen to one bit from this series where you just look at some of the rhetoric that he's used over the years on the campaign finance issue.

Mitch McConnell, Republican from Kentucky. Does it concern you that candidates for Congress spent $450 million running for office last year? Not particularly because that meant an awful lot of people participated by contributing to them. So I think that kind of increased participation is the kind of thing we ought to be encouraging. Where did this notion get going that we were spending too much in campaigns?

Compared to what? Americans spent more on potato chips than they did on politics. About what the American public spent on bubble gum. Spent on bubble gum. Bottled water. Bottled water. Cosmetics. Yogurt., alcoholic beverages, kibbles and bits ads. So when we talk about spending, we talk about compared to what?

This is one of McConnell's favorite arguments, right? Is that like, you know, people don't, you know, people spend more on their groceries. Like, what's the big deal? The idea is, and for a long time this has been something that he has believed, is that spending on politics is free speech. And the thing that I think a lot of people don't know about him is how hard he has fought any attempt at campaign finance reform over the years. You know, I mean, everybody remembers McCain-Feingold, right, when that passed. It was supposed to be this landmark campaign finance reform bill. And who is the person who rushed to the Supreme Court to put his name on the case to oppose it?

Mitch McConnell. One of the things that's always been interesting to me about him is that he often has very little concern about holding a view that you could view as broadly unpopular, right? Like the general idea of like, yeah, there should be less financial influence in politics seem to be something that when you pull it, a lot of people say, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Right. And whether it's this or a whole bunch of other things, he's never had a problem saying, no, that's wrong. And that's how I feel. He's the spear catcher, right? He does not mind being the one to say like the thing that is like that other people don't want to say, right? Nobody wants to stand up and be like, let's put more money in politics. That sounds corrupt. And he's just like, no,

he's very practical about it. He's just like, money helps us win. If you win, you get to play the game. If you lose, you have to go home. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we will come back and talk about probably the most controversial decision that he's made. And that is, of course, the decision to not hold a vote on a Supreme Court opening in the last year of President Obama's made. And that is, of course, the decision to not hold a vote on a Supreme Court opening in the last year of President Obama's presidency. in a safe and private online environment at your convenience. Get help at your own time and your own pace. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist. Visit BetterHelp.com slash politics to learn more and get 10% off your first month.

After more than 50 years of lies and silence, a witness to the attack on Jim Reeb finally tells the truth about what she saw. I didn't know whether they were going to get off or not, but I was glad when they did. Even though they were guilty and I knew they were guilty and they knew they were guilty. It's White Lies from NPR. Listen and subscribe now. And we're back. And Kelly, you interviewed McConnell a couple times for this. How did that experience go? Yeah, it was really interesting.

They gave us a couple hour-long sit-down interviews with him. One of the things that really stuck out to us was before that first interview is they were sending us articles and really hammering on this idea of Mitch McConnell's civil rights record. I mean, this was something they really wanted us to talk about. You know, he actually happened to be in Washington for the I Have a Dream speech. He couldn't hear it because he was working. He was working for a senator who helped break the filibuster in the Civil Rights Act. He was there for the signing of the Voting Rights Act. These are things they really wanted us to know for our interview. Nobody said outright that, you know, they were responding to criticism

that Mitch McConnell is too close to President Trump, somebody who I think people have problematic views on race. But that felt like the subtext. And then after the first interview, we'd finished everything. We were sort of in the outer office and he'd gone back into the inner office, the leadership office. And then his guy kind of comes out and calls him back in. He's like, Kelly, he wants to show you something. And he walks me over to this picture on the wall and it's of him and Antonin Scalia. Back when the two worked in the Justice Department, McConnell had actually sent that picture to Scalia while Scalia was still alive, signed it Mitch McConnell. McConnell after Scalia died his son was going through some of his things and found it signed it and

sent it back to McConnell McConnell has it hanging on the wall he's showing it to me actually gets tears in his eyes the family sent it to me in November of 2018 the same photograph and wrote at the top to Leader McConnell and his legendary foresight with appreciation from the Scalia family, May 2018. And I get given a lot of things in this line of work, but that was something I really treasure, and that's why I have it on my wall. And of course, when Scalia died, McConnell made the very controversial decision to say, no matter who President Obama nominates, he's not going to get a hearing. He or she's not going to get a vote. We're going to leave this seat to the next president, who, of course, was President Trump,

who appointed Neil Gorsuch. Sue, in the illustrious two years and a few months that I covered Congress with you, obviously Donald Trump's presidency hung over everything that happened in the building. But to me, it seemed like the number two thing that just pervaded every action taken in the Senate was the fact that McConnell had made that move and that it was Trump and not Obama who was filling Scalia's seat. Like that really shook things. It did. And in so many ways, you could argue that it really did help contribute to Donald Trump's victory. And by that, I mean, so much of Donald Trump's coalition or a significant influential portion of his coalition was the socially conservative right, who he very much campaigned for in the election, in large part by promising to put judges on the court who were in the vein of Scalia, right? This was a huge motivating factor on the right for getting to fill that Supreme Court seat. And it is what allowed a

lot of conservatives to hold their nose and vote for Trump was the singular promise of maintaining the conservative lean of the Scalia seat on the Supreme Court. So if not for McConnell's play there, Donald Trump may not have been able to make that promise or would not have been able to make that promise. And it may not have had the effect of cajoling social conservatives to suck it up and vote for Trump. An interesting thing, and Sue, you and I have talked about this, right, is that when McConnell looks back on that play now, it is, you know, this incredibly genius play, right? He calls it, repeatedly has said, is one of the most consequential decisions he's ever made in his life. And showing me that picture on the wall in his office and getting teary-eyed, like,

he thinks about this, he feels it deeply. But at the time when his office and getting teary-eyed, like, he thinks about this. He feels it deeply. But at the time when he held up in the seat, right, it was a very risky move. It was, you know, because he, McConnell, and a lot of Republicans and a lot of people in general thought Hillary Clinton was going to win. So he didn't know. I think he likes to reverse engineer it now and say, like, wow, what a genius move that was. But really at the time he didn't know that it was going to work out. Right. There's like an alternate world where Hillary Clinton appoints a much younger and more liberal justice to replace Scalia.

And the court looks radically different than it does now. Right. But of course, that didn't happen. Donald Trump has appointed two Supreme Court justices and Mitch McConnell has made a decision to prioritize federal judge appointments over anything else in the Senate. Right. And there's one other thing about that decision I think is interesting that, you know, other people have reported on, but that we found really interesting in looking at this is that, you know, the day Scalia dies, right, McConnell's on vacation. He hears about it and he makes the decision to hold up in the seat within the hour. And the reason for that is, I think is something not a lot of people know, is that, you know, there was going to be a Republican debate that night, a Republican presidential debate that night. So we're going to have Donald Trump on stage. You're going to have Ted Cruz on stage. And McConnell was getting word that Ted Cruz was going to bring

this up and that Ted Cruz was going to suggest that maybe the seat be held. And so McConnell actually made the decision to do it as a way to get out in front of somebody else making that decision. All right. So much more Mitch McConnell waiting for you in your podcast feeds. That's the way to sell it. Kelly, thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for coming on. Kelly McIver's podcast Embedded is looking into Mitch McConnell's career and all the consequence of it. You can check that out in your podcast feeds.

That is a wrap for us today on the NPR Politics Podcast. We will be back tomorrow with our weekly roundup. Until then, you can go to npr.org slash politics newsletter to subscribe to a roundup of our best online political analysis. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover politics. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. Thank you for Susan Davis. I cover Congress.

Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.