Mitch McConnell: Hero or Villain?

Mitch McConnell changed Washington forever — whether for better or worse is up for debate.

The Kentucky Republican announced this week that he would step down as Senate GOP leader in November, capping the longest run in Senate leadership in American history. Since he entered Congress in 1985, and especially since he assumed his first leadership position in 2003, he has left his mark on key legislation moving through Capitol Hill and reshaped the federal judiciary. He has also become known for a ruthless but effective way of getting things done in Congress.

We reached out to scores of top political thinkers and congressional insiders to ask what they think is the single most consequential way McConnell has changed Washington. Their answers spanned a wide range, from normalizing obstruction and shielding Donald Trump from accountability to serving as architect of the Kentucky Republican Party and reshaping the courts. Some said he broke the Senate; others said he saved it. Whether their appraisal of his impact was positive or negative, every participant agreed that we will be living with the Washington that McConnell made long after November.

‘His refusal to use his power for the greater good’

BY GEOFFREY KABASERVICE

Geoffrey Kabaservice is the director of political studies at the Niskanen Center in Washington, D.C., as well as the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party.

Mitch McConnell’s retirement as Senate Republican Leader, following Nancy Pelosi’s retirement from House Democratic leadership by about a year and a half, brings to a close a decades-long reign of highly effective legislative leadership in Congress. One might call this the Twilight of the Establishment. What follows McConnell, regardless of his successor, is likely to be a period of extended chaos and congressional dysfunction, in which the Senate will be reshaped by the intemperate passions and retreat from governance that increasingly have overtaken the House. So future historians reckoning with McConnell’s legacy will have to decide which was more important: the ways he helped to preserve order, or his sins of commission and omission that helped bring on the deluge.

I incline toward the latter. When McConnell first ran for political office, he presented himself as a Republican in the moderate model: a pragmatist whose interest in building a big-tent party found expression in pro-civil rights, pro-labor, and even pro-choice stances. But McConnell didn’t merely shift rightward once he reached the Senate in 1985. His determination to put party (and his own power) over country undermined the Senate’s bipartisanship and institutional effectiveness, which fed the partisanship and polarization that ultimately destroyed the GOP as a responsible, governing-minded party.

McConnell never had any illusions about Donald Trump or the dangers that his populism presented to America’s domestic stability and responsibility for upholding the post-World War II global order. But McConnell’s infamous 2010 statement that, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” marked the win-at-all-costs mentality that eventually paved the way for Trump’s domination of the GOP. McConnell’s decision not to convict Trump after Jan. 6 was merely one more instance in which he knew better but went along anyway. The Republican Party will miss McConnell’s awesome leadership effectiveness and the largely unseen ways in which he was willing to sacrifice his popularity in order to keep populist passions from breaking his conference apart. But his refusal to use his power for the greater good will stand as an object lesson in how putting party above country ultimately damages both.

‘Dramatically shifted the landscape of American law’

BY AARON TANG

Aaron Tang is a law professor at the University of California, Davis, and the author of the book Supreme Hubris: How Overconfidence Is Destroying the Court — and How We Can Fix It.

Even with the benefit of hindsight, it is often difficult to identify the most significant legacy that any single politician has left behind. That is not the case with Mitch McConnell. We can pinpoint the exact moment when McConnell left his most enduring mark on American politics: Feb. 13, 2016, in a statement the senator issued shortly after the announcement Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had died. Although 264 days still remained until the 2016 presidential election, McConnell boldly declared that Scalia’s “vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”

The gravity of that decision — and McConnell’s steadfast refusal to permit so much as a hearing for President Barack Obama’s nominee, then-Judge Merrick Garland — continues to reverberate throughout American life. Most immediately, by putting the future of the Supreme Court on the ballot, McConnell’s decision played a key role in Donald Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, despite his receiving nearly 3 million fewer popular votes than Hillary Clinton.

Moreover, it is only because Trump was able to fill Scalia’s seat that the balance of power over the Court swung to a 6-3 conservative supermajority after Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. And the combined upshot of these developments, all of which were made possible by McConnell’s decision on Feb. 13, 2016, has been to dramatically shift the landscape of American law on issues ranging from reproductive justice, to gun safety, to environmental law, to the administrative state. Just to illustrate: But for the 6-3 supermajority that McConnell made possible, the Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization would have looked radically different, as Chief Justice John Roberts’ middle-ground approach likely would have become law, one in which a right to abortion might well continue to exist prior to 15 weeks in pregnancy — effectively ensuring access to the procedure for some 98 percent of cases in this country.

‘Brutally exposed the fragility of political norms’

BY JOANNE FREEMAN

Joanne Freeman is the Class of 1954 professor of American history and of American studies at Yale University.

What is the most consequential way that Mitch McConnell has shaped American politics? Here's a contender: warping the appointment of Supreme Court justices to the point that the Court can delay justice in service of Donald Trump taking power, thereby jeopardizing the future of American democracy.

We live in an era that has brutally exposed the fragility of political (and even personal) norms that fundamentally shape our coming together as a people and a nation joined by a constitutional pact, and installed in their stead an utter lack of good-faith politicking. McConnell taught that lesson repeatedly, persistently, even joyfully, stabbing at democracy and enabling authoritarianism in the process. That has been his impact. That will be his legacy.

‘Hard things in pursuit of the just outcome’

BY BILLY PIPER

Billy Piper is former chief of staff to Senator Mitch McConnell.

Mitch McConnell has long understood that the key to getting a group of smart, ambitious people to move in unison is to first listen to what they have to say in order to understand their motivations and concerns. Some misinterpret his taciturn nature as aloofness, but that has never been the case. He is always calculating — carefully weighing the best way to achieve the goals of the team and move the country forward.

An overlooked example of where these strengths changed — or perhaps preserved — the course of American politics is when President Trump and many in the GOP begged McConnell to do away with the filibuster, thereby allowing the Senate to be ruled by simple majority. Leader McConnell, understanding the long-term ramifications of such a short-sighted change had a one word answer for Trump and his fellow opportunists: “No.”

His political opponents may paint him as a caricature of an evil mastermind. But it is his willingness to do hard things in pursuit of the just outcome and take the public beatings that have made him so valuable as a leader to the conference. All while he wears the scars from those attacks as a badge of honor.

‘The leader who is largely responsible for breaking the Senate’

BY JIM MANLEY

Jim Manley is a legislative and public affairs consultant who worked in the Senate for 21 years, including six as spokesman and senior communications adviser to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Shortly after the 2008 election, President-elect Barack Obama came up to Capitol Hill to meet with the bipartisan, bicameral congressional leadership in the ornate LBJ room to discuss the legislative session for the upcoming Congress. It was the height of the financial crisis

— the economy was in a free fall, the stock market was tanking, people were hurting and looking to Washington for help. At that meeting, everyone in the room, including Senator McConnell, pledged to do all they could to help put the country back on the right path. I was there, and I heard everyone, including Senator McConnell, say all the right things.

A few months later, after Obama was officially sworn in, one of the first pieces of legislation that Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the Senate floor was a bill, left over from the previous, Republican-led Congress, authorizing a number of national parks in just about every state in the country. It was about as noncontroversial a piece of legislation as one could get. Yet, in an indication of things to come, it took us three weeks to pass the bill, because Republicans, led by Senator McConnell, tried to kill it with the filibuster. As the new Republican leader, Senator McConnell made it very clear that he intended to put raw political power over the good of the country, and do all he could, in his own words, to make Barack Obama “a one-term president.” And the way that he did that was using the filibuster to grind the Senate to a halt. Use of the filibuster exploded under McConnell and over the next eight years, all but the most routine pieces of legislation were subject to a Republican filibuster. What was once a rarely used procedure became his weapon of choice to try and destroy the president.

Don’t get me started about Merrick Garland. Senator McConnell made up a rule so he could deny Obama the chance to have an up-or-down vote on his choice for the Supreme Court. Senator McConnell should be remembered as the leader who is largely responsible for breaking the Senate — probably beyond repair.

‘His consistent focus on winning Senate seats’

BY NEWT GINGRICH

Newt Gingrich served as the 50th speaker of the House of Representatives.

Mitch McConnell is a towering giant in the history of the U.S. Senate. As the longest-serving Senate leader from either party, McConnell mastered the art of leading an extraordinarily complicated institution. He has had a huge impact on campaign finance law. His efforts dramatically helped reshape the U.S. Supreme Court (in some ways the greatest single achievement of Donald Trump’s first term). McConnell’s ability to hold together a naturally disputatious group of aggressive and willful senators — and his consistent focus on winning Senate seats — make him an outstanding historic figure.

‘McConnell’s SCOTUS may ultimately save Trump from accountability’

BY CHARLIE SYKES

Charlie Sykes is the author of How the Right Lost Its Mind.

Mitch McConnell successfully reshaped the federal judiciary, including cementing conservative control of the U.S. Supreme Court. But the defining moment of his long career is likely to be his decision to save Donald J. Trump from conviction by the Senate in February 2021.

After the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, McConnell described Trump as “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.”

“Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police,” he declared. “They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president. They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.”

For a few days it seemed possible that McConnell himself would vote to convict, and that he might bring along enough of his colleagues to muster the 67 votes that would have made Trump forever ineligible for the presidency. But in the end, McConnell argued that Trump’s guilt was “moot,” because he was no longer in office and was therefore, “constitutionally not eligible for conviction.”

If McConnell had pulled the trigger, there would have been intense blowback from the MAGA wing of his party, but Trump would no longer have been able to use the Big Lie to catapult himself back into power. Instead, Trump quickly reasserted his absolute control of the GOP. By the time McConnell announced that he was stepping down, the party had been thoroughly Trumpified, principled conservatives had been exiled and Republicans had accepted Trump’s historical revisionism about the attack on the Capitol. And it is McConnell’s SCOTUS that may ultimately save Trump from accountability through its delays. No matter the outcome of the 2024 election, we will live with the consequences of McConnell’s decision for decades.

‘Eroded public trust in a key pillar of American democracy’

BY BILL SCHER

Bill Scher is a contributing writer to POLITICO Magazine and the politics editor for the Washington Monthly.

As of now, Mitch McConnell's most consequential political act is the brutish, corrosive way he stacked the Supreme Court — denying for 11 months any consideration of Barack Obama's nominee (the moderate Merrick Garland) to replace the deceased Antonin Scalia, abolishing the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees once Donald Trump was in power to remove any need for bipartisanship, then rushing Amy Coney Barrett's nomination ahead of the 2020 election just five weeks after Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death. Having politicized the judiciary more than any single individual in American history, McConnell has eroded public trust in a key pillar of American democracy.

But McConnell's legacy may be at least partially salvaged, pending the result of the 2024 election, by his late-career turn toward bipartisanship. When Joe Biden was inaugurated, few believed he could fulfill his promise to restore bipartisanship. After all, McConnell had a well-earned reputation as a stone-cold obstructionist. Yet McConnell never trafficked in Trump's election denialism and delivered Republican votes for much of Biden's legislative agenda including measures supporting infrastructure investment, semiconductor manufacturing, gun safety, postal service reform and meeting our debt obligations. He also has played a crucial role in providing aid to Ukraine, though his latest aid package is being held up by House Speaker Mike Johnson. If Biden wins reelection and Trump's darkly divisive approach to politics is again sidelined, McConnell's legislative cooperation — giving Biden a robust record of accomplishment on which to run — will deserve some of the credit.

Whether or not you believe McConnell's bipartisan final chapter is fully redeeming, it at least forces a reassessment of his underlying principles, which many have presumed do not exist. Four years ago, one associate told The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, "Give up. You can look and look for something more in him, but it isn’t there. I wish I could tell you that there is some secret thing that he really believes in, but he doesn’t.” The lengths McConnell has gone to unite the country behind Ukraine and against Vladimir Putin suggest otherwise. Squaring the more and less honorable aspects of McConnell's career will be a challenge for historians to tackle. But if nothing else, McConnell had a Senate career of enormous consequence.

‘The architect of our party’

BY TREY GRAYSON

Trey Grayson is a former Kentucky secretary of state and director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Mitch McConnell is an institutionalist, and he fought to protect the filibuster, because he knew it protected minority views and preserved the unique role of the Senate, his favorite institution. He also believed in the importance of the federal courts and prioritized precious floor time to ensure that conservative judges were able to be confirmed to lifetime appointments. The rulings made by those judges will impact American law and politics for decades after his retirement. And in the past few years, he continued to work for a Congress that would actually legislate on important matters, with the bipartisan infrastructure bill — including funding for Kentucky’s Brent Spence Bridge corridor — being a prime example.

As a Kentuckian, I must also note the role that he played in building the modern Republican Party in Kentucky. When he was elected to the U.S. Senate almost 40 years ago, few Republicans held positions in the State Capitol and in our county courthouses. The Democratic primary almost always determined the general election winner. After decades of recruiting and assisting young candidates — including myself, when I was a 31-year-old candidate for Secretary of State making his first run for office — Kentucky Republicans have more registered voters than Democrats, hold about 80 percent of legislative seats, and the majority of the local elected officials across the Commonwealth. That’s why we call him the architect of our party.

‘No compunctions or romanticism about Senate traditions’

BY CAROLINE FREDRICKSON

Caroline Fredrickson is senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and former president of the American Constitution Society.

Mitch McConnell is often described as being an “old school” Republican, who famously doesn’t talk to Donald Trump. But his biggest achievement in the Senate has been to cement Trump’s impact on the federal judiciary, helping him get three Supreme Court nominees confirmed as well as a record number of lower court judges.

McConnell played hardball in bending and abandoning rules that stymied Republican judicial nominees, while obstructing and slowing nominees coming from Democratic presidents. He has had no compunction or romanticism about Senate traditions and procedures — and I think that approach now characterizes his party.

His example shows that nothing succeeds like success. So if the filibuster becomes a problem for a Republican president with a legislative agenda and a Republican Senate, there’s no question they’ll change the rules. That’s the McConnell way.

‘Egoless, unsentimental devotion to power and the wielding thereof’

BY LIAM DONOVAN

Liam Donovan is a principal at Bracewell LLP and a former National Republican Senatorial Committee aide.

Mitch McConnell will depart his post as GOP leader later this year an icon to his allies and an archvillain to his enemies — and he wouldn't have it any other way. What else can you say about a man who takes such obvious relish in being cast as the grim reaper of the Senate? Who not only collects unflattering political cartoons, but displays them on his wall. Who gamely plays the mirthless baddie, serving alternatively as primary pin cushion and general election shield. Whose egoless, unsentimental devotion to power and the wielding thereof remains the hallmark of his record-setting tenure at the helm of the Republican Conference.

His exit is bittersweet, both for himself and for the GOP. His single most consequential act as leader — and make no mistake, the election-year blockade of Merrick Garland was the most audacious decision in the history of congressional leadership — helped usher in a president who would cement his legacy, transform his party and ultimately confound his ability to lead it in any meaningful way, an irony that is surely not lost on McConnell.

‘He more than anyone created the Senate of today’

BY MATT GLASSMAN

Matt Glassman is a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute and a former analyst at the Congressional Research Service.

For me, Leader McConnell’s defining contribution was his strategic belief that hardball opposition politics would not be punished by voters. This wasn't obvious in the mid aughts. But McConnell was right, and this ushered in the age of the 60-vote Senate, where the minority routinely filibustered everything, on both the legislative and executive calendars. In turn, this led to the 2013 and 2017 nuking of the filibuster for nominations, as well as the tightening of leadership control of the Senate floor, as cloture was preemptively filed and the amendment-tree filled on every bill, precluding both minority chicanery but also open deliberation. Leader McConnell didn't invent Senate hardball, but he more than anyone created the Senate of today.

Sitting alongside this was McConnell's basically amoral approach to politics. He has policy beliefs; you could probably well describe him as vaguely a Reagan Republican. But as a leader he was primarily concerned with the preservation of power and the harmony of his members. He excelled at taking the temperature of the caucus, and he never strayed far from them. This served him well as a flexible deal-maker and a party unifier; he was able to hold power and accomplish policy objectives. But it left him unable to operate as a transformative leader, and made him wholly incapable of bold moral leadership, which became increasingly evident during the Trump presidency.

‘Power used to decisive effect’

BY AZIZ HUQ

Aziz Huq teaches law at the University of Chicago and is the author of The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies.

There is an odd debate in the United States about the legitimacy of courts exercising broad policymaking power over issues of vital concern to American life. The debate is odd because it is often conducted in splendid isolation from facts about the American judiciary that Mitch McConnell, for one, well understood and acted upon.

For it is not quite right todismiss the courts, as some on the left do, as simply “a disaster for the democratic premise.” Rather, as McConnell well understood, the American Constitution enables democratically elected senators to wield immense power, extended well beyond their terms of service, over public policy via judicial appointments. It was a power used to decisive effect when he decided not to permit a vote on Merrick Garland’s nomination — rupturing decades of norms and opening the gates to a new era of norm-breaking (another legacy, oft overlooked).

In a few short years, he has reaped the end of abortion rights, affirmative action and a new constitutional dispensation in which the religious claim public monies while repudiating regulations designed to protect third parties. Democratic politics through judicial means can well be criticized because its entrenchment effects are more durable, its instrument more cloyingly elitist, its motions more nakedly hypocritical, or its bend tendentiously and unerringly to the right. But it is still an instance of democratic politics, of a sort, in action. Just ask McConnell.

‘He’ll be remembered for allowing Trumpism to eat the Republican Party’

BY MOLLY JONG-FAST

Molly Jong-Fast is a special correspondent at Vanity Fair, host of the Fast Politics podcast and an MSNBC political analyst.

Mitch McConnell was one of the few people who could have stopped Trump from imbibing the entire Republican Party. McConnell could have whipped votes for Trump’s removal after his second impeachment, but he didn’t. This was one of the most consequential political actions (or lack of actions) we’ve witnessed. I think McConnell will want to be remembered for delivering Trump those three Supreme Court seats, but I bet he’ll be remembered for allowing Trumpism to eat the Republican Party and later destroy it.

Almost 40 years in the Senate, and his greatest legacy will be handing the keys to his party to a feckless autocrat. To quote McConnell’s speech on the floor announcing he was giving up his leadership position: “Father Time remains undefeated.” Replace the word “time” with “Trump” and I think that nails McConnell’s legacy.

‘Commitment to the value of institutional norms’

BY BOB BABBAGE

Bob Babbage is a former Kentucky state auditor and Kentucky secretary of state.

The historic leadership tenure of Senator Mitch McConnell will be remembered in part for his profound, unfailing respect for the institution of the U.S. Senate. He knew well and fully embraced the traditions, rules, history and order of the lawmaking craft.

His knowledge and commitment to the value of institutional norms trace back to his earliest service as a young Senate staff member. It likely shaped his gift for seeing the long game as well as one extraordinary McConnell trademark: always being a step ahead in strategy. At our seminal moment in the role of Congress, others can look to Leader McConnell for proven foundational guideposts.

‘His partisanship ultimately overwhelmed his patriotism’

BY MONA CHAREN

Mona Charen is a policy editor at The Bulwark. 

Mitch McConnell embodied the weakness inherent in nearly all of the Republican “grown-ups” in the age of Trump. Once the GOP’s counterweight to unserious Tea Party candidates and empty gestures like Ted Cruz’s 2013 government shutdown, McConnell gradually accommodated himself to the crazy in the party. His natural instincts would sometimes slip out, as when he said: “Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country.” But then he would campaign hard for two Georgia senators who appeared with Marjorie Taylor Greene and endorsed the Big Lie about the 2020 election being stolen.

Cancer is apparently OK if the Republican majority in the Senate is at stake.

McConnell achieved a lot in his career, but sadly, his most consequential act was a dereliction — his failure to convict Trump in the second impeachment and disqualify him from serving in any office. If he had voted to convict and attempted to bring along nine other Republican senators, he could have spared the nation its current crisis. His partisanship ultimately overwhelmed his patriotism — a sad epitaph.

‘McConnell’s single-minded embrace of partisan victory’

BY MOLLY REYNOLDS

Molly Reynolds is a senior fellow in governance studies at Brookings, where she studies Congress.

It’s tempting to answer this question by pointing to a single consequential event, like McConnell’s decision not to allow the full Senate to consider Merrick Garland’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 or his choice not to vote for conviction of President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial in 2021. Those choices have mattered — and continue to matter — deeply for American politics. But it’s impossible to know exactly how things would have played out had McConnell behaved differently in those scenarios; we’ll never experience that alternate universe.

What is much clearer are the consequences of McConnell’s single-minded embrace of partisan victory for congressional Republicans, rather than specific, concrete policy goals, as the core driver of his strategic choices. In 2010, he famously quipped that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president” andexplained that, during the development of major initiatives like Obamacare, “we worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals, because we thought — correctly, I think — that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan.”

The notion that denying the president and his party policy wins is politically advantageous isn’t new, but McConnell’s embrace of it in a period of oft-shifting and narrow majorities has had profound consequences not just for policy but also for the incentives members face as they make choices about whether to cooperate across the aisle. When the goal is to “win,” the outcomes are different than when the objective is to solve problems.

‘Reshaped the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary’

BY AL CROSS

Al Cross is a professor of journalism at the University of Kentucky and a political columnist.

Mitch McConnell reshaped the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary, first by blocking Merrick Garland’s nomination, which made the court seat a presidential-election issue that helped Donald Trump win; then by working with Trump and conservative activists to put like-minded lawyers on the federal bench with lifetime appointments — most significantly on the Supreme Court, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

‘He stacked the federal bench with overwhelmingly non-diverse candidates’

BY SOPHIA A. NELSON

Sophia A. Nelson is an author, journalist and former House GOP Government Reform & Oversight Committee Investigative Counsel. 

Mitch McConnell's legacy, regrettably, will be that he publicly vowed to make the first Black president of the United States’ legislative agenda one that would be mired in stalls, stops, legislative partisanship and limited progress. He did just that. Worse, McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat that rightfully belonged to President Barack Obama before the 2016 election, when Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland (now Attorney General Garland) to the High Court. McConnell held that seat open, enabling Donald Trump, once he took office in 2017, to nominate Neil Gorsuch, the first of three picks that Trump would have in just four years. And worst of all, McConnell doubled down on his brazen partisanship during the early voting in 2020, breaking his own pledge to not pick a justice during an election, and instead pushed through the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

McConnell made Washington and in particular the Senate a less cordial and cooperative place. His most enduring partisan act is that he stacked the federal bench with overwhelmingly non-diverse candidates during Trump's first term, and he refused to call the Senate back to hold a removal trial before Trump was out of office in 2021 for Trump’s part in the Jan. 6 insurrection. This resulted in Trump’s non-removal and directly put America in the peril the country faces right now with Trump’s possible re-election to the presidency.

‘McConnell normalized obstruction’

BY SARAH BINDER

Sarah Binder is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a political science professor at George Washington University.

As the longest-serving Senate party leader, Mitch McConnell indelibly changed the ways and means of the Senate. Leading the minority, McConnell normalized obstruction; in the majority, McConnell championed turning the screws on the minority — especially in pursuit of a more durable, conservative federal bench.

McConnell alone did not create the “60-vote Senate” — the expectation that a Senate majority must always secure supermajority support to advance its policy agenda. But as Senate minority leader between 2007 and 2014, McConnell led Republicans to block Democratic priorities at nearly every turn. By minimizing (if not extinguishing) GOP support, McConnell made plain thatbipartisanship did not flow from the substance of a bill; it merely reflected whether any member of the minority was willing to sign on. His strategy fueled Senate partisanship, put most bipartisan deals out of reach (except if they might benefit the GOP at the ballot box) and helped return McConnell and the GOP to power.

In the majority, McConnell led Republicans to shift the ideological tenor of the courts to the right. In 2016, he conjured a new norm to justify blocking President Barack Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court in 2016. He led the GOP in 2017 to ban filibusters of Supreme Court nominations — after blasting Democrats for doing the same for lower court nominations. And McConnell and the GOP rushed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court bench in record time just days before the 2020 presidential election. As McConnell boasted, “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election. They [Democrats] won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.” That in a nutshell is McConnell’s indelible imprint on American politics.

‘Where he was able, [he contained] rejectionist members of his caucus.’

BY CHARLIE DENT

Charlie Dent served seven terms as a Republican member of the House of Representatives representing the 15th District of Pennsylvania. He is currently executive director of the Aspen Institute's congressional program and a senior policy advisor at DLA Piper.

Senator McConnell’s departure from Senate leadership is a big loss for the governing wing of the Republican Party. A master tactician, McConnell had his fingerprints on nearly every bipartisan agreement that became law during my 14-year tenure in Congress. From TARP to budget agreements, to debt ceilings, to appropriations measures and more, McConnell played a constructive role in enacting must-pass legislation in divided government. But his most consequential impact of all, love it or hate it, was his role in shaping the federal judiciary with judges who moved the court to the right. McConnell's imprint on the judiciary will be remembered long after he leaves the Senate.

McConnell skillfully guided his caucus in the direction of responsible governance and where he was able, to contain rejectionist members of his caucus. The ultimate institutionalist, McConnell believes passionately in the democratic process and the rule of law. He will be missed.

‘There’s a reason his biography is titled The Cynic’

BY JEFF GREENFIELD

Jeff Greenfield is a five-time Emmy-winning network television analyst and author.

History will record that no one did more to shape the nation’s political terrain than Mitch McConnell. His manipulation of the Senate rules helped create a Supreme Court majority that will likely last a generation; his refusal to convict a president he himself denounced as a likely felon was a key reason why a clear and present danger — who had viciously slandered McConnell's own wife — was not removed from political life.

The self-professed “institutionalist” put the retention of power as his overriding goal, abandoning many of the values and positions he held when his career began. There’s a reason his biography is titled The Cynic.

‘Contributed to the unchecked power of the executive branch’

BY JULIA AZARI

Julia Azari is a professor of political science at Marquette University.

Mitch McConnell is one of the chief architects of what’s become the dominant way for establishment Republicans to deal with Trumpism. He’s denounced Trump’s level of preparation for office, his norm violations and his dangerous behavior on Jan. 6, 2021. And then turned around to endorse him, clear the path for him to gain power, and vote against both of his impeachments. McConnell is hardly the only Republican to take this cynical approach to Trump, but he’s one of the most prominent, and his embrace of this strategy has helped to make it mainstream. The consequences of this approach have been diffuse and wide-ranging, allowing for Trump to gain power in the party and evade consequences for abuses of power.

One area where this is especially significant is presidential impeachment. When Trump was impeached in 2019, McConnell, as Senate majority leader, rejected the request for witnesses during the Senate trial. In justifying this move, McConnell used language describing impeachment as “undoing a national election,” a framing that undermines impeachment as a process. Even more notably, McConnell voted against the 2021 impeachment. Yet after the vote — in which Trump was acquitted by 10 votes — the Republican leader spoke publicly, maintaining the former president was responsible for the events of Jan. 6, but constitutionally ineligible for impeachment because he had left office by the time the Senate trial began.

McConnell was not the first to take this approach to impeachment. In 1868, Senator Lyman Trumbull (R-Ill.) voted to acquit Andrew Johnson and then spoke negatively about his fitness to serve in office. McConnell took this to a new level, with a fine-tuned sense of procedure and power that have been used to diminish the potential of impeachment as a tool of accountability, and to heighten the ways in which partisan polarization chips away at institutional barriers. Mitch McConnell will be remembered as an institutionalist and a legislator. His actions in the Trump years have contributed to the decline of institutions and the unchecked power of the executive branch.

‘A Supreme Court that is at the center of our major political issues’

BY MARY FRANCES BERRY

Mary Frances Berry is the Geraldine Segal professor of American social thought at the University of Pennsylvania.

Democrats gave Mitch McConnell the opportunity to achieve his most important accomplishment as majority leader — giving Republicans control of the federal courts. Exhausted by McConnell’s success in leading the minority Republicans to routinely use the filibuster and “blue slip” procedure requirements, which Democrats had used when they were in the Senate minority, to defeat Obama’s nominees, the Democrats caved.

Some civil and human rights groups insisted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Democrats change the rules to permit the confirmation of more judges in the courts below the Supreme Court. Reid gave in and in November 2013, led the Senate in changing the rules, eliminating filibusters for federal judicial and executive branch nominees, but not appointees to the Supreme Court. When McConnell, other Republicans and some Democrats warned them they would regret the decision, they responded that Hillary Clinton would probably be the next president and they would take the Senate after all.

Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015 and confirmation of Obama’s nominations slowed to a trickle. The refusal to confirm Merrick Garland, the failure to elect a President Clinton in 2016 and the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett all led to the Dobbs decision. President Joe Biden and the Democrats in control now in the Senate have recovered some ground on judicial appointments to the lower federal courts but have not made up for the appointments not made in the Obama years. McConnell has been an adroit leader of the Republicans but his legacy, in part, thanks to opposition miscalculations, includes a Supreme Court that is at the center of our major political issues, and we can only hope will avoid deepening our public divisions.

‘A key architect of the Senate’s institutional transformation’

BY JOSHUA HUDER

Joshua Huder is a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute.

Mitch McConnell was a key architect of the Senate’s institutional transformation in the 21st century. While he was leader, the Senate evolved from a slow, deliberative, cordial institution into a sharp-elbowed partisan legislature. He helped transform the Senate from an “upper body” the Framers envisioned into something more like a smaller House of Representatives — with all the hardball politics and partisan trappings you’d expect from a democratic legislature.

In my mind, he’s sort of congressionally married to former Democratic Leader Harry Reid. They came to power long after partisan polarization had gripped American politics, but it had yet to fully envelope the Senate. Minority obstruction was present but not an everyday occurrence. Filibusters were common but not omnipresent. Until Reid and McConnell became leaders, the Senate had resisted many of the partisan procedures and politics that were already commonplace in the House and various state legislatures. But under the duo, Senate politics became a game of maximizing obstruction and extraordinary partisan attempts to overcome it. Filibusters became ubiquitous, 60 votes were required for even inconsequential amendments, legislative norms were destroyed, deliberation was discouraged, the first blows to the Senate filibuster were landed, and reconciliation became the primary means parties secured their policy priorities.

McConnell was the partisan leader the Senate demanded after partisanship engrossed American politics. On those terms, it is hard to imagine a more effective legislative leader. Unfortunately, in the process, many norms that kept the wheels of government turning were damaged or destroyed. And we still do not fully understand the long-term effects of those breakages.

Yet, McConnell did have an institutionalist streak. The legislative filibuster remains intact in part due to his efforts. He attempted to reignite regular order when he became majority leader in 2015 before obstruction caused him to abandon all hope. And in recent years, he’s demonstrated the limits of his partisanship: warning against shutdowns; taking positions outside party orthodoxy on vaccines; backing foreign aid in opposition to his party’s standard bearer; striking major deals with President Joe Biden. A lot of long-term legislative leaders morph with their party. Yet McConnell has proved fairly stubborn on a number of issues as his party evolved under Trump. In all, he is without question among the most consequential legislative leaders of the past century.

‘A long shadow over the pursuit of equality and justice in the United States’

BY MICHAEL STARR HOPKINS

Michael Starr Hopkins is a Democratic strategist who has served on the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Delaney.

Mitch McConnell's role in reshaping the federal judiciary marks a seismic shift with dire implications for civil rights in America. By maneuvering the Supreme Court to a conservative majority through craven and immoral tactics, McConnell has engineered a judiciary that poses significant challenges to the advancement and protection of civil rights. His oversight in the confirmation of over 200 federal judges has directly led to decades of progress being rolled back in voting rights, LGBTQ+ protections and racial equality, marking a regression that could take generations to rectify.

McConnell's legacy will cast a long shadow over the pursuit of equality and justice in the United States.