Marathon Pundit: AP looks favorably at McConnell

Monday, December 13, 2010

AP looks favorably at McConnell

Two years ago wrote a post about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), which was entitled "The Great Kentuckian."

It's nice to see that AP is coming around to my way of thinking.

If the relationship holds, the Obama White House will be dealing with the Republicans' most agile negotiator, stone-faced, governed by discipline and swathed in Southern gentility. McConnell is a conservative ideologue at heart who operates as leader with cold pragmatism and a lawyerly approach to persuasion.

"I don't want the president to fail. I want him to change," McConnell says in almost every public forum.

It's worth noting that McConnell apparently has never aspired to Obama's job, an uncommon quality among senators and one that helps remove doubt about his motives when he is locked in negotiations or rounding up votes, colleagues and former staffers say.

But he stands out in the Senate in other ways, too. He's a stern tactician in a chamber of flamboyant public speakers. He revels in the cat-herding nature of the job, unlike his predecessor, Bill Frist of Tennessee, a surgeon practiced in life-and-death matters who was unfamiliar with the Senate.