Continuing a new series, our writer considers just what makes the Senate’s majority leader so amazing I have to confess to an unhealthy obsession with Mitch McConnell, the majority leader of the United States Senate. It is not just that he has the strangely amazed look of a southern gentleman who has just caught his wife in flagrante with the stable hand. It is also that he has a very clear idea of what he wants to do and will stop at nothing to do it. His aim is to serve the interests of the Republican party in the Senate. Everything else – the interests of the US, the constitution, truth, justice, even Republicans not in the Senate – is subservient. There is something about the US separation of powers that makes congressional politicians highly distilled examples of their profession. McConnell is a distillation of this distillation. He is horribly good at what he does. Whenever I read how, this time, he has misplayed his hand, I wait for events to prove that he has. So far, they haven’t. Continue reading...