By MICHAEL COLLINS
Thursday, January 25, 2007
The Mitch McConnell that most Americans know is a soft-spoken senator who takes himself and his politics seriously.
The Mitch McConnell that Rich Kern knows is a college-football fanatic and fisherman who likes to pass his weekends on a houseboat out on a lake.
"We go tie up in a cove, and we sort of let the world pass us by," said Kern, a close friend and fishing buddy. "It's quiet. It's serene. And it's just as peaceful as it gets."
"It's quite a sight to see the senator on a personal watercraft," Kern added. "Most people would never think of him in that way."
Americans are going to be seeing a lot more of McConnell _ the senatorial version, at least _ now that he is the new Senate Republican leader.
Ever since he assumed the leadership role formerly held by Bill Frist of Tennessee, McConnell has become the face of Senate Republicans, the one who is on television sets night after night explaining his party's position or lecturing Democrats on the need to work with Republicans.
McConnell and his party may no longer be able to set the Senate agenda now that Democrats are back in the majority. But as the leader of the minority, he remains one of the Senate's most influential members.
Republicans are far from irrelevant in the newly aligned Senate, McConnell said during a recent interview in his new office suite, which looks out over the National Mall and the Washington Monument in the distance.
Democrats hold a slim 51-49 advantage in a body in which at least 60 votes are needed to get anything done. If the Democrats try to force a bill down their throat, Republicans can pull a trick out of the Democrats' old playbook and stop the legislation with a filibuster, McConnell warned.
But, "that's not my first choice," he said. "I don't get out of bed every morning trying to think of ways to thwart the majority. They won the election. And we're getting off to a good bipartisan beginning."
McConnell's calls for bipartisanship haven't gone unnoticed.
"Senator McConnell deserves credit for helping to set the right tone in the Senate at the beginning of the 110th Congress," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
McConnell may be preaching bipartisanship in Washington, but it's not something he's known for in Kentucky.
Back home, he has the reputation of a fierce partisan, one who makes life miserable for Democrats. He is widely credited with bringing the Kentucky Republican Party back from the brink of extinction and whipping it into a political force that now holds the governor's mansion and a majority of seats in the state Senate.
McConnell, 64, began to make his mark in national politics in 1984 when he won a long-shot bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Walter Huddleston. He's a skilled political strategist who has a knack for anticipating his opponent's next move and reacting quickly, a talent that is beneficial to any politician, especially one who's in the minority.
Hunter Bates, his former chief of staff, calls him "the best political chess player in America."
"He is always two to three steps ahead of his opposition," Bates said. "You see it especially in his campaigns, where he will be attacked by his opponent, and ultimately his counterattack is more powerful than his opponent's attack. One of his mottoes has always been if you throw a pebble at me, I'll throw a boulder back at you."
He's also a stickler for organization and detail, which Bates discovered when he served as McConnell's driver during his 1990 re-election campaign. After every event, McConnell would ask his staff how many bumper stickers they had placed on cars, Bates said.
"I can to this day remember that we got 125 supporters to put bumper stickers on their cars at the Lincoln Day Dinner in Corbin, Kentucky, in 1990," Bates said.
Though he sometimes comes across as humorless and aloof, friends say McConnell is witty and much more approachable than he appears.
At home, he does his own laundry ("I'm a truly liberated man!" he says) and reports that his wife, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, makes dinner ... dinner reservations, that is. The senator cracks a smile at his own punch line when he tells that joke.
Away from Washington, McConnell follows college football religiously. He's a fanatic about University of Louisville football (his alma mater), goes tailgating at every home game and attends several away games every year. He also likes movies _ action flicks are his favorite.
McConnell's role models include fellow Kentuckian Henry Clay, a leading senator and statesman back when the United States was still in its infancy. Founder and leader of the Whig Party, Clay was known as the great compromiser because of deals he brokered on the issue of slavery in 1820 and 1850.
One of the first things McConnell did when he moved into his new office suite in the U.S. Capitol was hang up a portrait of Clay. McConnell wrote his senior thesis in college on Clay and the Compromise of 1850, and takes inspiration from the old statesman.
Clay "understood the need for compromise on the things that were truly important for the country," McConnell said. "I think that remains just as true today as it did in 1820 or 1850."
