After writing his college thesis on Kentucky Sen. Henry Clay and his pivotal role in the Compromise of 1850, Mitch McConnell set out to become the next great senator from the Bluegrass State when he first ran for office in the Ronald Reagan era.
His beliefs even now still harken back to those glory days of the Grand Old Party.
With his wife, Elaine Chao, set to become the DOT Chief under Donald Trump’s leadership, the Washington power couple have seen their stars recently rise to previously unseen heights.
That being said, here are five things to know about Mitch McConnell:
He has been in Washington since the LBJ years
You would have to go back to the days that the Beatles filled the airwaves, Steve McQueen graced the silver screen and Vietnam was getting under way in order to find McConnell’s start date in Washington.
The 74-year-old Republican’s first job was as an intern for Sen. John Sherman Cooper way back in 1964. Since then, the University of Kentucky grad has worked doggedly both in a judiciary manner and for the GOP on legislative measures dating back to Gerald Ford’s presidency.
He led GOP obstruction efforts against President Obama
Flickr/Gage Skidmore
As POLITICO pointed out in a lengthy profile of the Southerner, “for most of Obama’s presidency, McConnell has been the face of Republican obstructionism.”
That’s led some to call him a modern-day Machiavelli. Others have noted his presence in the Senate as a reliable face of conservatism at a time when being so is hardly popular amongst most Americans. Indeed, Obama had to face a united front between McConnell and former House Speaker John Boehner for most of his time in office. The federal budget deals almost always had to go through them before reaching the president’s desk, and contained compromises that bogged down the process and sometimes threatened to shut down the government.
His last feat of obstruction came when SCOTUS pick Merrick Garland was denied a confirmation at the end of Obama’s second term.
He has some things in common with President-elect Donald Trump
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal years ago, McConnell wrote that the tax code is “insanely complex” and “driving American jobs overseas.” One of Trump’s promises in his Contract with the American Voter is to simplify the tax code, creating new brackets and providing breaks to corporate interests while eliminating some taxes all together.
Though McConnell has worked in government for his entire career, and Trump is a total Washington outsider, the two seem to have a common agenda:
Repealing the Affordable Care Act, and unifying the GOP over issues such as dismantling the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and putting manufacturing jobs back on the U.S. map.