In two years, a great iterator of the evident will retire from the United States Senate. He was a man who stood for undeniable truth. A man who destroyed the separation of church and state by stacking the federal courts with right-wing Christian conservatives. A man who upheld the Constitution by allowing a fascist demagogue to flout it. A man who said, “It’s certainly a happy day for the GOP,” when that same fascist demagogue won a second term. A man who helped Trump sack the government, tank the economy, imprison millions, enrich himself on the backs of working- and middle-class Americans and put a non-elected billionaire carpetbagger in charge of fiscal policy. That man is Addison Mitchel McConnell Junior, republican senator from the state of Kentucky and Master of the Obvious.
When Yahoo News asked McConnell whether he regretted not having done more to stop Trump, he said, “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.” So true, so obvious, and so not an answer to the question. The reason Senator McConnell was asked the question is that he could have done something to stop Trump; he could have honored his oath to uphold the Constitution, as being a senator required of him, and voted to impeach a president who incited an insurrection and conspired to overturn a free and fair election. If McConnell had done his job, Trump would not have been able to run for a second term. So why, after lividly condemning the fascist demagogue who broke federal laws and scorned the Constitution, did he not vote to impeach? “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.” So true, so obvious, and so not an answer to the question.
McConnell has always manifested his resistance to doing the right thing in stating the obvious. Granted, stating the obvious may sometimes be necessary to remind the ignorant, defiant, delusional or dishonest of what is, in fact, true. But in McConnell’s case, it’s a rhetorical device designed to maintain his party’s political dominance. It distracts his colleagues from the problems he pretends to address, because what is obvious and known to all comes with a ready-made consensus. And using the obvious to avoid meaningful debate is what McConnell’s hold on political power is all about.
McConnell’s uncanny ability to hold an audience thrall to the evident is par to none. His speeches are like a series of truisms, delivered with wagging index for emphasis and in a tone that pretends to remind us that there is something essential to consider here. But that essential something is invariably what we already know, which is to say, the obvious. For example, instead of conceding the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, McConnell took the podium and stated the obvious: “The voters have cast their votes. The Electoral College has spoken. It is our Constitutional duty to confirm the results.” He droned on like this for ten minutes or more without uttering a single meaningful, important or impactful idea. Why did he not state outright that Biden legitimately won and Trump legitimately lost the election? Because it would have debunked the Big Lie that the election was stolen.
Not only does McConnell use the obvious to cover his ass from attacks by fellow republicans, he uses it to bamboozle democrats. He knows that saying what everyone already knows, especially if done in that admonitory “let me remind you” tone of his, precludes discussion and meaningful action. His truisms blur into irrelevance, as if meaning had no more place in his speech than legislation had in his agenda. Here he is at a March 23, 2020 press conference on gun violence, a chronic American problem that he has avoided addressing for half a century: “What I’m not attracted to is something that doesn’t work, and there have been deep-seated, philosophical differences between Republicans and Democrats about how to deal with gun violence. One thing we do know for sure, is that these shooters are invariably mentally incapacitated, mentally incapacitated.” Okay, let’s break this down: Senator McConnell is not attracted to things that don’t work, which is why he’s done nothing that has worked; philosophical differences exist, which is why he’s done nothing to reach a consensus that gun violence is a problem; and people who murder scores of other people for no reason are crazy, which is why he’s done nothing to keep assault weapons out of their “mentally incapacitated” hands. To sum it up, McConnell is no more interested in what doesn’t work than he is interested in what does work. He simply avoids having to do anything about gun violence by delivering a series of truisms that offer no strategy to reduce it and no admission that it’s even a problem.
Meaning exists not in things themselves but in relationships between things. By stating the obvious, by sticking to facts and avoiding relationships (what the facts mean), McConnell has successfully avoided fixing real problems for his entire career. He opposed a bipartisan commission to investigate the cause of the January 6 attack on the Capitol by again stating the obvious: “The events of January 6 are very clear. I spoke clearly and left no doubt about my conclusions. There is, has been, and will continue to be no shortage of robust investigations by two separate branches of the federal government.” Again, the familiar drone of truisms, but with a little more art than usual. First, “the events are very clear,” because events are always very clear. They are what happens and what happens is obvious. What he does not address is why the events happened (i.e., the cause). Next, he states that he spoke clearly and left no doubt about his conclusions; that is, he avoided stating his conclusions by stating that he already stated them. This is a typical McConnell sophism: to avoid saying what you mean by saying that you already said it. Lastly, he tells us that investigations are ongoing by two branches of the federal government. It suggests that an investigative commission would investigate what the other branches of government would investigate, because all the investigative parties would investigate the same thing in the same way, right? He doesn’t say that a bipartisan commission would likely investigate why the attack happened, because the cause of the attack would point to Trump’s disinformation campaigns, mobilization of white nationalist militias, conspiracy to fake electors and promulgation of the Big Lie. All of which could implicate McConnell himself, because he abetted Trump’s con.
In all this we see a man who like a water strider always moves over the surface of things. The real motive behind McConnell’s strategic superficiality is to put congressional, judicial and executive power in republican hands, which he all but admits by the end of his comments on the bipartisan commission: “What is clear is that Democrats have handled this proposal in partisan bad faith from the beginning.” What that means is that McConnell’s objection to investigating the cause of the January 6 attack is itself fundamentally partisan and his investment in republican power is more important than his duty as a senator to uphold the Constitution of the United States and prosecute Trump for breaking federal law and overriding the Constitution.
McConnell leads a party that is so antipathetic to change that all it can do to address the challenges of our ever-changing world is to punish the opposition and destroy the Republic itself. So far, his legacy consists of doing away with checks and balances; eroding the division of church and state; ceding congressional power to the executive; launching useless wars for profit and channeling public money into the private sector in the form of tax cuts for billionaires and corporations. After forty-plus years in public service, McConnell must know that his droning on about what everybody already knows is a tactic to avoid addressing the real problems of the times. He must realize that his legacy, after he retires, will be gun violence, health care bankruptcy, climate change, wealth stratification, pharmaceutical opioid addiction, foreign hostility, massive disinformation by partisan news outlets and social media platforms, dissolution of checks and balances, partisan divisions, private wealth determining public policy and a kleptocracy run by a tyrannical conman. Which is why, on his retirement in 2027, he should be presented with a mahogany desk clock sporting a little brass placard that reads, “Master of the Obvious. 1982-2027.”