Mitch McConnell is standing in his office smiling. Hanging on the walls are faces, mostly stern, from Washington’s past. McConnell’s portrait might soon join them. Last month, the Republican leader in the US Senate stepped down from the role he has held for longer than anyone in US political history. At the age of 82, McConnell is “ready to do something else”.
A pivotal politician in a tumultuous time, McConnell earned power and used it to shift the country to the right during his 17-year tenure. He won races across the country, raised more than $1bn to boost his colleagues and negotiated trillion-dollar-plus bills, including the aid that lifted the country out of the pandemic. He became enormously influential and broadly unpopular, making enemies among Democrats for blocking judicial nominations to the Supreme Court and among Republicans for his occasional, sharp criticisms of Donald Trump. With the latter preparing to return to the White House next month, the veteran lawmaker issues a warning from America’s past. “We’re in a very, very dangerous world right now, reminiscent of before world war two,” he says. “Even the slogan is the same. ‘America First.’ That was what they said in the ’30s.”
Warming to his historical theme, McConnell turns to one of the portraits behind him, an influential Senate Republican of the wartime era named Robert A Taft. Son of the 27th president William Howard Taft, Robert was “a raging isolationist” who opposed Lend-Lease before the second world war and both the creation of Nato and the Marshall Plan afterwards, says McConnell. “Thank goodness Eisenhower beat him for the [presidential] nomination in ’52 and had a much different view of America’s role in the world.”
McConnell has been Kentucky senator since 1985. Having committed to serving the final two years of his term, he intends to spend the time pushing back against the increasingly isolationist elements of today’s GOP. “The cost of deterrence is considerably less than the cost of war,” he says, reeling off the figures to prove it. In the second world war, the US spent 37 per cent of GDP on the fight. Last year that figure was about 2.7 per cent.
His words are targeted directly at Trump and vice-president-elect JD Vance, who have argued that the US should not be spending any more money on Ukraine. McConnell is a strong believer in the Ronald Reagan view of the US role in the world, rather than the Trump one. “To most American voters, I think the simple answer is, ‘Let’s stay out of it.’ That was the argument made in the ’30s and that just won’t work,” he says. “Thanks to Reagan, we know what does work — not just saying peace through strength, but demonstrating it.”
Trump has also said that enemies within the US are more dangerous than Russia and China. “I don’t agree with that,” says McConnell.
Though some of his biggest moments as Senate leader came during Trump’s first presidency, he is no fan of the president-elect. Having blocked Barack Obama from replacing the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, McConnell was instrumental in the confirmation of three conservative justices to the court under Trump. Yet in The Price of Power, a new McConnell biography by reporter Michael Tackett, McConnell calls Trump “stupid” and a “despicable human being”.
After a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol on January 6 2021, McConnell said the then-president was “practically and morally responsible” for inciting the violence. Yet he didn’t vote to convict him in the ensuing impeachment trial which, if successful, would have barred Trump from running for the White House again. His rationale was that Trump was already out of office.
Today, McConnell acknowledges for the first time that he voted for Trump last month, although he can’t bring himself to mention his name. “I supported the ticket,” he says. Asked if he wishes he had done more to prevent Trump from becoming president again, McConnell says: “The election’s over and we’re moving on.”
It’s characteristic of McConnell’s brand of politics. He prizes GOP power above almost all other considerations. You could call it Republican First. But he recognises that the struggle for the future of his party is an uphill one. “He has an enormous audience, and he just won a national election, so there’s no question he’s the most influential Republican out there,” he says of Trump. He also calls Trump’s recent victory after losing in 2020 a “remarkable comeback”. As to his own part in shaping the foreign affairs of the next administration, McConnell says, “No matter who got elected president, I think it was going to require significant pushback, yeah, and I intend to be one of the pushers.”
He will chair the Senate appropriations panel’s subcommittee for defence, making decisions on how to spend billions of dollars for the Pentagon. “That’s where the real money is,” says McConnell. He doesn’t know if the US will spend more on Ukraine military aid but “the goal here is for the Russians not to win”. Of Ukraine and Israel, he says, “We’ve got two democratic allies fighting for their lives. I don’t think we ought to micromanage what they think is necessary to win.”
McConnell’s appetite for a scrap is not in doubt. He overcame polio at an early age and repeatedly sought recognition from his peers, starting with winning a role as “king” in a first-grade school pageant. Through an uncommon devotion to politics, he fought his way up from Senate intern to leader. Reflecting on his legacy, he considers his part in dramatically changing the make-up of the Supreme Court as “the most important thing that I’ve been involved in”. The court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe vs Wade is just the most prominent example of how the six conservative justices have shifted US law to the right.
A prodigious fundraiser, he has been a staunch advocate for more money in politics. The 2024 presidential and congressional races cost $16bn, according to the non-partisan non-profit Open-Secrets, compared to $5.6bn in 2000. Asked if that is too much, McConnell says: “No. It’s not. This is political speech. One of the really good things the Supreme Court has done is to get the government out of telling people how much they can spend advocating their points of view.”
On the day he became the longest-serving party leader in US Senate history, McConnell told his biographer, “I wasn’t sure I was good enough.”
Why did he feel that? “I thought of that all along the way,” says McConnell. “Mainly, I was filled with gratitude about the men and women that worked with me over the years, who were really smart and made me look better than I was every single day.” His advice on what it takes to endure as a leader is simple: “Be a good listener.”
McConnell faced questions over his health last year when he appeared to freeze while speaking to reporters on two separate occasions. Not long after our meeting it was reported he had suffered a fall in the Capitol. Following the recent Senate leadership elections that confirmed South Dakota senator John Thune as his successor, McConnell is said to have told colleagues he felt “liberated”. “I think that’s a good way to put it,” he smirks. “In the leader job, you spend a lot of time taking arrows for everybody else and trying to help everybody succeed in ways that they choose to, and you don’t give your opinion on a number of things simply because you’re asked.”
I ask about something he won’t miss. McConnell takes a long pause. “Well, I enjoyed it and wanted very much to get the job,” he says. “I just think it’s important to know when to leave the stage.”
Alex Rogers is the FT’s US business and politics correspondent
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