Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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Mitch McConnell isn’t too old to continue as Senate minority leader.
He’s clearly too sick and frail to continue as Senate minority leader.
The Kentucky senator recently had another health scare, this time after being asked if he plans to run for reelection. It’s the second time in the past couple of months he was literally frozen in place for several seconds during a press conference. I won’t armchair-diagnosis him, though it’s not a stretch to say such repeated episodes aren’t the hallmarks of a healthy man.
An aide helping him feebly walk away from the podium reminded me of Strom Thurmond, South Carolina’s longest-serving senator. Thurmond began his political career in the 1940s. He won a senate seat in 1954 and didn’t leave that chamber until Nov. 19, 2002 — just 16 days shy of his 100th birthday. Truth be told, though, he had left long before that.
During his final years, the well-known segregationist had to be helped on and off the Senate floor by aides, some of whom would tell him how to vote loud enough for others in the chamber to hear. He had become a shell of himself, little more than an avatar for those wanting to use his name to advance their interests even as I was being inundated with messages from Thurmond supporters insisting I wasn’t seeing what everyone paying attention clearly could.
Thurmond’s long political career was damaging to my native state, including his decision to launch the longest filibuster in U.S. history to stop the Civil Rights Act from becoming law. He was also a so-called Dixiecrat who declared “all the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, our churches and our places of recreation and amusement.” That didn’t stop him from secretly fathering a daughter with a young Black woman.
I didn’t have sympathy for the man, just as I have little for McConnell.
McConnell has been among the most destructive political forces of our era. He took hyper-partisanship to new levels, something from which this country continues to suffer. He’s a primary reason the Supreme Court is less trusted and revered than it has been in decades.
Given his health concerns, it should be lost on no one that he was willing to sacrifice the health of millions of Americans, including residents of his own state, just to win votes. His efforts against the Affordable Care Act, to prevent its passage and to dismantle it once it did, made it harder for desperate Americans to receive the care they needed. He wasn’t alone in those efforts but led the charge from his perch in the Senate.
That’s why I won’t begrudge anyone who expresses mixed feelings about seeing McConnell in such a fragile state today. On a human-to-human level, it’s sad. He’s a clearly vulnerable man who shouldn’t be paraded around as though on “Weekend at Bernie’s.” It’s not a time to gloat or play political games. The man needs rest. Someone who loves him should lead him by the hand into retirement.
It is a bit galling he has access to the best health care this country has to offer after spending a career preventing millions from having similar access. That feels unjust.
That doesn’t mean we should be ugly. Even in our assessments of this complex political figure, we should be careful not to conflate age and health in misleading ways. Of course age makes us more vulnerable to a bevy of medical conditions and complications. That doesn’t mean every 81-year-old should be forced to quit jobs they love doing and continue doing well. South Carolina has the nation’s only all-male Supreme Court because a mandatory retirement law forced the only woman to relinquish her seat.
There’s lots of talk about many of our elected officials being too old. That’s a political question best decided by voters. McConnell’s situation is different.
The man is clearly sick. He should be led by the hand home.
Issac Bailey is a McClatchy opinion writer in the Carolinas.
