The Long Game

by Mitch McConnell

  Over the course of the investigation, the committee interviewed 264 witnesses, took 111 sworn depositions, issued forty-four subpoenas, read 16,000 pages of documents, and spent 1,100 hours in meetings. And as the details emerged, the darker the situation appeared. It became clear that Packwood had systematically abused his power and privilege. Rather than expressing regret and remorse, he made things worse by adopting a bunker mentality and becoming aggressive and antagonistic. In the course of interviewing witnesses during the investigation, it came to the committee’s attention that Packwood kept a diary. The Ethics Committee subpoenaed the diaries, but Packwood refused to honor the subpoena and we had to go to the floor of the Senate to enforce it.

  Packwood litigated and took the fight all the way to the US Supreme Court. It delayed the investigation by several months, but eventually we got access to his diaries, at which point it was clear that Packwood had altered them after the investigation had begun in order to thwart our efforts. This matter was the most egregious one. After a tremendous amount of deliberating, and a fair amount of soul-searching, I knew that given the alteration of evidence, there was only one remedy. I called a meeting of the members of the committee and suggested that Bob be expelled from the Senate. Both political sides agreed this was the proper course. On September 7, 1995, after our committee, on my motion, unanimously recommended that Bob Packwood be expelled from the Senate for ethical misconduct, he resigned.

  To recommend expelling from the US Senate a colleague, a member of my own party, and a friend with whom I had served in the Senate for over a decade was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do in my career in public service. The decision was made more painful by the fact that expelling Packwood meant our party would lose his seat. This did not sit well with many in my party, and I was painfully aware that this decision might dash my hopes of one day holding a leadership position. But I felt it was important to stand firm and send a clear message to the nation that no man is so important to the well-being of our nation that we have to compromise our fundamental principles.

  As I had learned from Senator John Sherman Cooper, it was my job to stand firm in what I believed, even when it meant making tough decisions like these, and it was the voters’ job to decide if these decisions should allow me to stay in office. Their chance came soon enough when, on January 15, 1996, I announced my campaign for my third Senate term.

  The day of my announcement, I prepared to embark on a fly-around of the state. The plan was to begin in Frankfort, where I’d officially announce at the state capitol, in front of the bust of John Sherman Cooper, who had died five years earlier, and then on to eight different media markets to reintroduce myself. Early that morning, Larry Cox drove me to Bowman Field, a private airstrip in Louisville, where the prop plane we’d rented for the day was waiting. I had asked Kyle Simmons to run my campaign, and he was waiting for us in Frankfort.

  Once we were aboard the plane, one of the engines had trouble starting. It would sputter, but not fully turn over. Well, it’s a darn good thing this happened. As we subsequently found out, the plane had been used the night before and a young guy who worked at the airfield had topped off the gas. But rather than using aviation fuel that prop engines require, he’d mistakenly added jet fuel. I got off the plane and Larry was waiting.

  “I could smell it was the wrong fuel as soon as the pilot engaged the engine,” he said, looking a little stunned. “We’re lucky. If there’d been enough aviation fuel in the tank to get those engines started, you would have been able to lift off. But as soon as that aviation fuel was burned through and the jet fuel got into the injection system, both engines would have cut off immediately.”

  It was a true near miss, and Larry was visibly shaken. About five years earlier, Senator John Heinz was killed when his chartered plane crashed outside Philadelphia, and since then, Larry had gone to great lengths to make sure our travel was always as safe as possible—no more single-engine planes flown by Pat Datillo. I was shaken as well, but we didn’t have time to dwell on it. “I have an appointment to announce my reelection in Frankfort in about an hour,” I said. “Let’s find a car to get us there.”

  Later that day, Larry was able to secure another plane so that we could stay mostly on schedule, and I made it to every one of the planned events. I was running against Steve Beshear, Kentucky’s former lieutenant governor, who had attended University of Kentucky law school at the same time as I did. Right from the beginning, I decided not to run as a so-called revolutionary. This was the term assigned to members of Congress who had, in the run-up to the congressional elections two years earlier, signed on to the so-called Contract with America, a document that acted as a policy platform, detailing ten items Republicans promised to take action on if we took control of the House. Many of these issues were commonsense things, such as encouraging small business, streamlining procedure in the House, and welfare reform.

  I agreed with the Contract with America, except for one thing: term limits, which—fortunately—was the one item that didn’t pass the House. To put it bluntly, term limits is one of the worst ideas that’s ever come on the American scene. It’s born of the shortsighted notion that learning and experience is bad, when just the opposite is true. This is the case in any industry—why would you want to retire people who have the most experience in their field? From my study of the history of the Senate, and my own experience, I knew that the more senior members of Congress are typically those who have a greater perspective, and with it, a greater insight and sense of courage. From what I saw in the most experienced of my colleagues—people like Ted Kennedy, George Mitchell, Bob Dole, and Pete Domenici—they’d been convinced of things as a result of their experience and were less inclined to react to whatever whim happened to be speeding across the nation at the moment. If you’re going to read every poll and knuckle under every hiccup, you’re going to be a pretty lousy representative.

  And as someone who’d run twice for the Senate, and was currently in the midst of another reelection campaign, I knew we didn’t need to legislate term limits, because we already had them. They’re called elections.

  Very happily, I won mine that November. Not only did I beat Beshear, but in a year that Bill Clinton carried Kentucky for the second time, I was reelected by twelve points. It was a landslide, a truly remarkable result, and I have to admit, after all the years of rough campaigns, of barely getting by, after two terms of standing my ground, this one felt awfully good.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Value of the Team

  If you were to stop by my office in Washington, DC, today, you’d have the pleasure of meeting a woman named Stefanie Muchow. Stef started as an intern in my office in 2003 and is now the person you have to see if you want to see me. For the last several years, she has steadfastly guarded my door and managed my schedule, made me far more efficient than I’d otherwise be, and is the first person I look to speak with when it comes to any sports-related event. Like me, she’s a die-hard Washington Nationals baseball fan, and unlike me, she tended to believe the Cincinnati Bearcats had a chance of beating the University of Louisville Cardinals each season. I know the press likes to portray me in a certain way (I’ve been called everything from humorless to evil), but to actually know me is to know that when it comes to people like Stef and the rest of my staff, I’m a bit of a softy. Because no matter how unpleasant politics can sometimes get, even in this world of forced smiles and canceled plans, of bland buffets and late-night calls, it’s hard not to feel optimistic when you are surrounded by a team as talented as mine.

  Many of the hiring decisions I’ve made were based on an instinct I had during a short, often chance, encounter with people, and I’ve very rarely been wrong. I’m often reminded of something Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said to one of his staffers who was more than a little intimidated by the idea of working for him. “You already have all of these Ivy League grads on your staff,” this staffer sai
d to Senator Moynihan. “What do I have to offer?”

  “Let me tell you something,” the senator answered. “What they know, you can learn. But what you know, they will never learn.” The man the senator was speaking to was Tim Russert.

  I’ve long believed in this sentiment—if you give talented people the chance to do something they’ve never tried, you’re likely going to be surprised at how well they do it. Terry Carmack, that young man who showed up at my campaign office back in 1984 with no political experience and no connections, is now my state director, and one of my closest aides. I was so impressed with Kyle Simmons when I met him in an elevator at a hotel in Louisville that I hired him as my press secretary after a conversation that lasted no longer than the time it took us to get from the tenth floor to the lobby. He went on to be my campaign manager and chief of staff. When Billy Piper came to inquire about the job as my driver in 1991, it didn’t take long to know I had just met a young man with a lot of promise. This, despite our somewhat awkward interview, during which he told me he wasn’t even a Republican.

  “And why is that?” I’d asked him.

  With beads of sweat forming above his eyebrows, he told me that when he’d first registered to vote in his hometown of Louisville, he’d registered as a Republican. “But the clerk handed the paper back and told me I needed to check the Democrat box,” Billy explained. “I asked her why and she said that was the only way I’d ever get to vote for the governor. She said, ‘In Kentucky, the governor is always a Democrat, and the race is always decided in the primary. So if you want to help choose our governor, honey, you gotta be a Democrat.’ I really wanted to be able to vote for the governor, and so I did what she said.”

  “Well, I think you’ll make a fine addition to our staff,” I said. “But God, I sure hope all Kentuckians aren’t as gullible as you.” Billy put a lot of effort into proving just how astute he is, and over the next twelve years he’d work his way up from driver to become my chief of staff.

  As my third Senate term began, I was well aware of how much the success I had enjoyed was due not just to Elaine and my parents but also to the support of my staff and friends, and I decided to throw a party to honor and thank them all. I rented the Kentucky Derby Museum at the Churchill Downs racetrack, sent out more than two hundred invitations, and hired a band. The best date I found to do this was very fortuitous. It was November 8, 1997, exactly twenty years to the day I was elected county judge in Jefferson County.

  I was glad to celebrate with my colleagues and friends that wonderful evening. The party was also a great way to underscore how long I’d lasted in politics and, remarkably, the fact I still enjoyed the privilege of doing the work I’d set the seemingly unreachable goal of doing so many years earlier. Someone made me the name tag I wore throughout the evening: “Mitch O’Donnell, Mayor of Louisville”—the names I’d been called by Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush during my first Senate campaign, when they were hardly the only two people who had trouble remembering who I was.

  In the remarks I made after dinner, I made it clear I had no intention of working any less hard than I had been working for the last decade. This wasn’t a retirement party, but more, I hoped, a halftime celebration, and I certainly had reason to celebrate. With my third term under way, I was a far cry from that back-row seat in the Senate Chamber. Now I was chairman of the Rules Committee, chairman of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee within the Appropriations Committee, and, most significantly, a year prior, my colleagues had elected me chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), one of five leadership positions in my party.

  As the head of the NRSC, I was now building not just my own talented staff but also a slate of senators who could most effectively advance a conservative agenda. I’d known for many years (if not, truth be told, from my first day in the Senate) that I wanted to one day hold a leadership position in my party, helping to call the plays and not just run them. And this particular job was a good fit for me. Unlike many members of Congress who view their efforts to get elected as a burden, I’ve always greatly enjoyed campaigning. I relish the contest—the excitement of it, the matching of wits, the debates—for the same reason I like sports. There’s a certain amount of time you have to battle it out, and when the clock runs out, there’s a clear winner and a clear loser. As we headed toward the 1998 midterm elections and the 2000 presidential election, I was thrilled to be helping to call the Republicans’ plays.

  I liken the beginning of an election cycle to the Kentucky Derby. Some of our candidates are not going to make it around the first turn, while others seem on their way to victory from the first shot. It is the job of the NRSC chairman to help the party avoid jousting with windmills or buying landslides, and to focus our efforts and money on the candidates we might help win.

  I had been eyeing the chairmanship of the NRSC—a job overseeing fund-raising and strategy to help Republicans get elected to the Senate—for some time, and had, in fact, run for it twice unsuccessfully. In 1990, I was beaten by my good friend Phil Gramm, and two years later, I foolishly decided to take him on again. (I nearly beat him that second time, losing the race by just one vote.) It was Phil himself who nominated me for the position in 1996.

  By the time that Phil nominated me, I had learned the most important lesson when it comes to running for a leadership office: the best way to avoid a contest is to have no opponent. In the months leading up to the December vote for the NRSC chairmanship, I’d gotten on the phone with every one of my Republican colleagues to tell them of my interest in the job, and to ask for their support. Come the day of the vote, I’d secured enough votes that I had already wrapped up the position, and I ran unopposed.

  In my first Senate race against Dee Huddleston, gaining the attention and support of the NRSC had been a real game changer, allowing me the funds to stay on the air the last eight weeks of the campaign, giving us the push we needed in the end. It was gratifying to now be on the other side, to help usher into office promising candidates committed to advancing the conservative agenda. As I like to remind people: winners make policy and losers go home.

  I named Steven Law, who’d been my chief of staff, as executive director of the committee. Going into the 1998 elections, we were all still feeling confident from our astounding 1994 wins. That, coupled with Clinton’s falling approval ratings and ongoing problems with the Monica Lewinsky scandal, raised Republican expectations higher than I was comfortable with. Expectations were so high, in fact, that my good friend Majority Leader Trent Lott suggested to the members of our conference, on more than one occasion, that he expected us to get to sixty Republicans, the number required for complete control of the Senate.

  “Quit running around telling people we’re gonna get to sixty,” I told him one morning after yet another one of his pronouncements. As much as I hoped we might, and as hard as I was working several races across the nation to get us there, I still tend to view each election cycle with a lot more equanimity, having never forgotten the lesson I’d learned back at thirteen years of age, on the pitcher’s mound of the all-star game. As soon as you think you’re good enough to pitch a no-hitter, up walks an opponent prepared to knock your first pitch straight over that fence.

  Sure enough, our expectations were too high. If we were to continue the baseball analogy, the elections of 1998 felt like our team had entered the World Series with the expectation we’d sweep, only to lose it all in four games. We were still in the majority in both houses, but the high expectations bred great disappointment. In the House of Representatives our party lost six seats, the worst midterm results in sixty-four years by a party not holding the White House. This led to a lot of internal unrest and, on the House side, a leadership revolt. Newt Gingrich, who just two weeks before the election had predicted a gain of ten seats, resigned as Speaker; John Boehner was replaced as conference chairman by J. C. Watts; and there was a very spirited contest for Dick Armey’s job for
House majority leader. He was challenged by both Jennifer Dunn from the state of Washington and Steve Largent from Oklahoma. Armey managed to hang on, but not without a fair amount of acrimony.

  The unrest in the Senate was minor league in comparison, but there was some frustration because when the smoke cleared, we had stayed even with fifty-five Republicans. The chairmanship of the NRSC is a two-year term, and just a few weeks after the results were tallied, I was up for reelection. It was a little off-putting when my colleague Chuck Hagel from Nebraska announced he was mounting a challenge to my reelection, holding press conferences to say that due to our lackluster performance in the 1998 elections, new leadership was needed. But come December 1, when my Republican colleagues met to elect the leaders of our party, I beat Hagel 39–13. Afterward, a reporter for Hagel’s hometown paper, the Omaha World-Herald, called the Senate historian’s office to ask about the margin. It turned out mine was the second-biggest victory in a leadership election in the Senate since World War II.

  While that was gratifying, I still took the results of the 1998 election cycle pretty hard. I felt like the captain of a team that had come up short, all while I’d begun to earn the reputation as a skilled political operative. Much to my surprise, I’d been included on the National Journal’s list of the hundred most important people in Washington, DC, among people like Bill and Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. After years of semi-obscurity, working among some of the sharpest political minds in the nation, it felt good to gain some respect, but now, after my first election cycle as chair of the NRSC, the results were disappointing.