Local political leaders could learn from Senator McConnell
Kaieteur News – He’s not an easy guy. As a fierce partisan politician, he dropped like a stone in estimating many more. Other than Republicans, few loved his lock-step moves with the now torpedoed president. He had this aptitude for political political games, a smart power broker, and countless tangible tactics that left opponents falling short and hating all he represented. Yet during the first full week of Congress’s turbulent 2021, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) rose to his fullest height and played his most memorable role in a most storied career in U.S. politics.
It simply shows that all is not lost, that there are still a few, if not very good, men in the American political firmament, and with whom it would be an honor to fight alongside in the foxholes , especially when the enemy is firing relentlessly overhead. This is the kind of man and political presence we could use in this country. For when the chips are down, and even if it means you have to go against the trend and trend and break ranks with your own president and go against your own party itself, then it is done.
Men from the shadows of Watergate, who turned against President Richard Nixon, because he left them no choice, if they retained any distinctions of personal honor and political integrity. And when all is said and done, there is that strange code where personal word and integrity count above all else in the August chambers of the US Congress. If a man was found emptying with his colleagues, it is done. It’s as short and simple as that; and when it was discovered that Nixon was lying to them, it was all over for guys like Larry Hogan and Caldwell Butler and Howard Baker. Senator Barry Goldwater, an archconservative from Arizona, was given the thankless task of informing his president that he had lost all support among Republicans in Congress.
Senator Mitch McConnell, leader of the Senate Majority, was recently found on the horns of a dilemma with no exit points. The Electoral College certification process had to be smooth, efficient and credible. Interference could not be allowed to corrupt this final process in the American electoral system. Outside the Senate chambers, a physically intimidating crowd was hunting for any game in town, the electronic crowd was fouling at the moon, and the president demanded more than violating Senator McConnell’s loyalty tests . He demanded blood and honor, which neither McConnell could give. Not for any president or party or position that would question its integrity for all of life.
An article by the editors of the National Review, dated January 7 and titled, Mitch McConnell’s “Finest Hour” captured the somber, yet clueless, tone and purposeful leadership of the Kentucky senator: duty, he explained himself in a thoughtful, forceful, deeply felt speech, and then after a pro-Trump crowd interrupted the cause, he fiercely expressed his disgust and commitment to Congress to complete its work. ”We continue with another quote from the same article: the senator noted that his vote to accept the result of the elections was” the most important “he had cast in his 36 years of political service.
Senator McConnell reminded his colleagues that they must all “sum up the patriotic courage shown by our former carriers not only in victory, but in defeat.” And he pointed out that Parliament has “a call above an endless spiral of party revenge.” When America is most needed, they are found somehow, not in overflowing droplets, but in sufficient numbers to lead the way and make a difference. It was at this hour of his country’s most urgent need that Mitch McConnell stepped out of the shadows into raw sunlight and took in the heat. This is the way it will be, and nothing else, so help me to God!
That is the American Way that has been so mercilessly lost for some time now. It came full circle with Mitch McConnell’s last grandest stand. We salute him. Guyanese political leaders could learn from it and imitate it, and operating in this country could be a much better place to live.