LOUISVILLE, Ky.
Barack Obama lost Kentucky in 2012 by 23 points, yet the state remains closely divided about re-electing the man whose parliamentary skills uniquely qualify him to restrain Obama's executive overreach. So, Kentucky's Senate contest is a constitutional moment that will determine whether the separation of powers will be reasserted by a Congress revitalized by restoration of the Senate's dignity.
Even counting Justice Louis Brandeis as a Kentuckian — at 18 he defected to Harvard and New England — Mitch McConnell, 72, is second only to Henry Clay as the state's most consequential public servant. McConnell's skills have been honed through five terms. He is, however — let us say the worst — not cuddly. National Review has said he has “an owlish, tight-lipped public demeanor reminiscent of George Will.” Harsh. But true.
Democrats selected McConnell's opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, 35, Kentucky's secretary of State, largely to further their “Republicans loathe women” fable. McConnell, however, is running even with Grimes among women, partly because of the persuasiveness of his wife, Elaine Chao, the longest-serving Labor secretary since World War II (2001-09).
Grimes' cringe-inducing campaign has depended on a migraine-inducing argument: She broadly disagrees with her party's leader, but it is important that she help perpetuate Harry Reid's iron-fisted shutdown of the Senate for Obama's convenience. Her campaign has raised more money than McConnell's in three consecutive quarters, but money is not magic, which would be needed to make her candidacy coherent.
Since Republicans won control of the House in 2010, the Democrat-controlled Senate's function has been obstruction. Reid has prevented bills passed by the Republican House from coming to a vote and has prevented Republicans — and Democrats, too — from proposing amendments to Senate bills that would be awkward for Democrats to oppose or for Obama to veto. Obama has cast only two vetoes, both for technical reasons on minor matters. Such paralysis of the Senate leaves Obama uninhibited in his use of executive orders and bureaucratic mission-creep to advance goals that should require legislation.
Beneath McConnell's chilly exterior burns indignation about the degradation of the institution to which he has devoted much of his life. The repair of it, in the form of robust committee and amendment processes — and an extended workweek — will benefit Democrat members, too.
Kentucky's Senate election is 2014's most important, for a reason rich in irony: Although Grimes considers McConnell the architect of gridlock, electing her to inevitably docile membership in Reid's lockstep ranks would perpetuate this. But a re-elected McConnell, with a Republican majority, would, he says, emulate his model of majority leadership — the 16 years under a Democrat, Montana's Mike Mansfield. He, like McConnell, had a low emotional metabolism but a subtle sense of the Senate's singular role in the nation's constitutional equilibrium.
George F. Will is a columnist for The Washington Post and Newsweek.
