A stiff, old man
Shaped a world
He’d never have to live in
Set in place injustices
Inequities
That would long outlive him
Short term
Politically
He served a selfish master
Long term for
Humanity
He crafted a disaster
He didn’t care
About the cost
A future world would bear
Power, control
His only care
Democracy despairs
Mean old man
You’d burn it down
To satisfy your aims
At the expense
Of all of us
To win your power games
You were at the table
You were in the room
You were at the wheel
Yours will be the name
That lives on in shame
For opting instead to kneel
When Trump
The wannabe tyrant
Could be brought down for good
Impeached, convicted
Able not
To wreak the things he would
Mitch McConnell
That’s your name
In infamy you’ll live
For failing
In your duty
Justice then to give
Spineless
Yellow lackey
That is what you are
Choosing party
Over country
Cowardly senate “star”
Republic at risk
Because of you
The blame lies at your feet
Democracy
And freedom
On the line and in retreat
Draw a line
Directly
To your failures then to act
Upon the clear
High crimes of Trump
As borne out by the facts
Mitch McConnell
Failure
Is how you will be known
For the faulty
Leadership
You have too often shown
Obsessed old man
Pathetic
Now see your legacy
As he who
Dug the grave
For the world’s democracies
Sad old man
You had the chance
You could have been a hero
But you opted to
Reject your oath
And are forever now a zero
You had two shots
To put a stop
To that lawless man’s insanity
Instead you chose
To appease Trump’s base
And his evil corrupting vanity
Mitch McConnell
Tired old man
Your ghost will ever haunt us
Through the legacy
You leave
To remind and taunt us
D. Gee, January 2024
In my estimation, it is possible that in spite of their somewhat contentious relationship with one another, Mitch McConnell has been the principal enabler of Trump’s rise to power and ability to sustain such a poisonous presence in our nation’s politics. One would think that McConnell’s supposed respect for American institutions would have provided him with a core set of guiding principles from 2015 to the present. However, rather than showing himself to be a true institutionalist, McConnell’s actions have instead revealed his core principles to instead be a commitment to partisan power and control, with the exercise of any other principles held in total abeyance to party interests. Hence, McConnell felt completely secure in hypocritically stonewalling Obama’s nomination of a replacement for Antonin Scalia on one stated basis while completely reversing his own prior rationale to rush through confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett at the end of Trump’s first term.
These actions driven by McConnell completely disrespected and disregarded established institutional norms and principles to allow Trump to eventually appoint three of the current nine SCOTUS justices. As a result, whereas Trump should legitimately have appointed one of the three while Obama and Biden would have be the appointing presidents for the other two, we now have the highest court in the land populated with a supermajority of justices steeped in the far right wing conservatism of the oxymoronically named Federalist Society and deeply committed to a slanted judicial philosophy crafted and promoted by Leonard Leo and like-minded others. The long-term damage done to our system of government and the rights and freedoms of far too many residents of these United States is already being realized, and conservatives are pressing their limited government/states’ rights/antiregulation/Christian nationalist mentality hard on nearly every front with high confidence of seeing substantial success as these efforts are litigated up the ladder. Gutting the power of the federal government relative to individual states along with critical federal agencies like FDA, EPA, OSHA, HHS, and so many others that do a massive amount of good for common people is core to the objectives of this movement. In the process, we creep closer and closer to an unworkable conflicting power structure more akin to what failed so badly under the Articles of Confederation before the Framers recognized the essential need for a strong federal government rather than uncoordinated state-by-state conflict and dysfunction.
The destruction of SCOTUS as a trusted institution of integrity was but one aspect of McConnell’s failures relative to the common good. His perhaps even greater failures were in condemning Trump’s clearly proven abuses of power informally in conjunction with both impeachments while still choosing to circle the party wagons when Trump could and should have been convicted in the Senate in both instances. Each instance, in succession, simply emboldened and enable Trump in greater ways and made him and the danger he represents even harder to stop. McConnell’s influence and leadership could easily have ensured conviction in the Senate in either instance, thus guaranteeing that Trump could never hold the highest office in the land again. McConnell instead equivocated (chickened out) and “deferred” judgment in the instance of the first impeachment to the electorate (who definitively rejected Trump in 2020) and the second impeachment to the judiciary (as reflected in the multiple criminal cases currently moving forward against Trump), neither of which ensures Trump can’t return to power (a very real and concerning possibility here at the beginning of 2024).
Frankly, Trump is exactly the type of individual that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was constructed to prevent from ever holding national office (as assessed by many of the best legal scholars across the political spectrum) and at this point, I am very much in favor of having him definitively disqualified by SCOTUS under those provisions. Unfortunately, I have little confidence in SCOTUS as currently constituted to step up and make that call as they should on a purely legal constitutional basis (as they are supposed to do as the ultimate constitutional arbiter in our system of government) without reference to political considerations or ramifications, but I can hope they have the courage to do the right thing. After all, we are supposed to be a nation of laws. Sadly, I will not be surprised if they instead render a politically motivated (and/or biased, self-serving) ruling clothed in some type of contrived legal justification and in so doing, would almost certainly remove any potential effectiveness and “teeth” from Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for all time via the precedent they set. At the end of the day, given the current highly conservative makeup of SCOTUS, should they disqualify him on the basis of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, nobody in America should doubt the appropriateness of their ruling because the overall political leanings of the court as a whole clearly favor Trump.
Anyone who thinks that defeating Trump at the ballot box again would be the last, best word has clearly not been paying attention to Trump or the GOP, who will never accept an election result where Trump loses but will continue to deny the outcome regardless of the manifest facts and evidence just as with the 2020 election. The only way to remove the man from relevance is to ensure he is disqualified once and for all from holding the office. Unfortunately, none of these outcomes (disqualification or resounding election defeat) will solve or heal the divisions that Trump and his allies of fostered and nurtured and fed over the last eight years. The divisions and mistrust in our core institutions will remain with us for years (perhaps generations) to come, but healing and reconciliation across these dividing lines cannot even begin until Trump has been relegated to a place of irrelevance in the dustbin of history. He will never let us move on otherwise because he can clearly never let go of any grievance or perceived wrong (and he himself must always prevail).
McConnell could have made sure that happened via either impeachment trial in the Senate, but failed. Trump abused his power obviously and egregiously in both instances as proven by the clear and extensive facts and evidence. Should Trump ascend to the presidency again, whether in 2024 or otherwise, it is almost certain that the US as we have known it will cease to exist as a viable democracy (this is no overstatement and cannot be underemphasized), but will descend to the status of a Russia or Venezuela where elections are held in principle but with predetermined outcomes determined by the oligarchic powers that be (and not by the will of the electorate). That would be the worst-case legacy of McConnell’s abject failure to lead and to demonstrate fidelity to the Constitution rather than loyalty to a party. That would indeed be an outcome that would haunt us all for generations to come.
Note that my focus here on McConnell does not absolve any of the other GOP Senators (or other GOP officeholders or operatives) who voted to acquit Trump; they are responsible for their own actions and votes and should be held accountable at the ballot box. But as the Republican leader in the Senate, McConnell was in a unique position to marshal the necessary votes to convict, which would have been consistent with his own strong statements asserting Trump’s obvious guilt and the horrific magnitude of Trump’s abuse of power and betrayal of his oath of office. McConnell’s political calculus to do otherwise to try to maintain control of the Senate failed him in that short term objective and failed our nation for the long haul.
Finally, the references to age in this poem are intentional and are meant to draw attention to not only McConnell’s age and tenure in office but also to the skewed age/tenure range (and non-representative makeup) of far too many of our elected officials in the House and Senate. Some would consider me “old”, but McConnell has almost 20 years on me and should have stepped aside years ago to allow new leadership to be developed in his state and party. Along with the fact that compensation and benefits accorded to these elected officials are largely decoupled from the systems that apply to the rest of us, the long tenure and elderly age range among these officials is problematic for a lot of reasons. At least one issue is that they too often don’t have to live with the direct consequences and impacts of their actions and decisions on a personal basis. Experience matters, but so does representation and relevance and familiarity with what we all live with daily, weekly, and yearly under the laws and policies promulgated by these legislative bodies. I am also concerned about the temptations to entitlement, cronyism, personal enrichment, and corruption that can take hold and increase over time in positions of power where accountability is arguably poor. As a result, I strongly favor implementation of term limits for Representatives and Senators at both the state and federal levels. Because of the issues we have seen with packing of SCOTUS and other powerful judiciary positions with lifelong appointments, I also strongly favor term limits for those positions as well (18 years has been proposed elsewhere with solid justification and seems suitable to provide a good balance of institutional stability, efficiency, and turnover).
Some will note in this context that Biden is the same age as McConnell, and I will point out that Trump is nearly as old as both. The only reason Biden ran in 2020 (and is running now) was because he was someone who could win the Democratic nomination and clearly defeat Trump, the manifest despotic danger of whom he (and many of us) clearly recognized. In an ideal world, all three would be enjoying retirement (Trump preferably from behind bars) but we do not live in that ideal world. Biden has resoundingly demonstrated that he remains a capable and savvy leader having accomplished more of significance in his first term than most presidents ever have. Biden is fully qualified, competent, decent, and a stable hand whereas Trump is the polar opposite with crooked and corrupt thrown in. By all objective measures, “Sleepy Joe” is an alert, aware, crafty, and imminently capable leader and statesman as demonstrated by the clear evidence of his administration. “Dirty Donald” is just that: a despotic, filthy, corrupt, irresponsible, incompetent, treasonous, unhinged, and lawless man. I might prefer a younger challenger to Trump, but Biden is a solid presidential choice and has earned a second term. Possible third-party candidates have no real chance of being elected but will only serve to split the vote for one or the other (or both) of the major party candidates. Not a worthwhile consideration and a waste of an otherwise meaningful vote.