For almost a month, Mitch McConnell and his Senate Republicans fought the parliamentary equivalent of guerrilla warfare. Having lost Georgia’s second round and the Senate with them, McConnell still managed to prevent the House’s formal reorganization. In an already sulphurous political scenario, the obstruction – the need for 60-vote supermajorities to pass legislation – appears once again as a critical point.
In other words, Adam Jentleson’s The book is perfectly timed and appropriately subtitled. Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy is a credible and well-documented plea to abolish a 19th-century relic used to thwart the majority’s agenda.
As Jentleson makes clear, the obstruction was first exerted by an agrarian and slavering south as opposed to the flourishing manufacturing economy of the north – and modernity itself. A century later, in the 1960s, obstruction became synonymous with Jim Crow, segregation and the evil doctrine of separate, but equal.
A 54-day obstruction of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 shifted the nation’s focus to the irregular legacy of slavery, 101 years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. In a century and a half, much and so little has changed.
In Jentleson’s narrative, John Calhoun is the progenitor of the obstruction. As a senator for South Carolina in the 1840s, he sought to muzzle the voices that supported the abolition of slavery. Building the debate was one way of doing this. Calhoun was also vice president of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. He saw slavery as more than just an evil to be tolerated. As Jentleson notes, for Calhoun, slavery was “a good thing. A positive one. “
Calhoun also believed that states could separate from the union. Therefore, he won the ire of Jackson, a fellow slave owner. Jackson would have said, “John Calhoun, if you part with my nation, I will part your head from the rest of your body.” Old Hickory was a former general as well as president.
Jentleson draws a line from Calhoun to McConnell via Richard Russell, a segregationist senator from Georgia and a Democrat who served from 1933 to 1971. Russell once said: “Any southern white man worth a pinch of salt would do anything to maintain white supremacy . ” One of the three Senate office buildings bears his name.
As for the current minority Senate leader, Kill Switch reminds the reader of a previous quote from McConnell: “The most important thing we want to achieve is that President Obama is a president of a term.” A dubious distinction, but a Donald Trump would come to hold.
Jentleson is not a dispassionate observer. A confessed Democrat, he was once Deputy Chief of Staff to Harry Reid. As a Democratic leader in the Senate for a decade, Reid, a former Nevada boxer, often struggled with McConnell. Reid’s legacy includes the Affordable Care Act and the removal of obstruction for referrals to lower federal courts and the executive branch.
Continuing from where Reid left off, McConnell ended the obstruction for Supreme Court confirmations. Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett should thank him for his work, not just Trump.
“With the flick of a wrist,” writes Jentleson, McConnell had become “nuclear”.
Today, the author hangs his hat on Democracy Forward, a nonprofit political organization chaired by a Democratic super lawyer, Marc Elias, who includes John Podesta, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama White Houses. Ron Klain, now Joe Biden’s chief of staff, was once treasurer. The group’s targets include Ivanka Trump and her alleged ethics violations.
Kill Switch can become myopic when you point your finger elsewhere. For example, the book censors Republicans for trying in 2013 to block confirmation from Mel Watt, a former North Carolina congressman, to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), a financial regulator. But Jentleson makes no mention of Watt’s lapses.
Watt tried to cut funds for the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) – after he cleared him of allegations that he watered down consumer protection legislation in exchange for campaign contributions. For their efforts, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington classified Watt’s conduct as “shameful”.
In addition, in 2018 there were reports of Watt being investigated for sexual harassment. More than a year later, the FHFA reached an agreement.
Jentleson can also do a lot with race and ethnicity, interconnected kingdoms full of traps and landmines. He says that of the current black members of the Senate, only two are Republicans: Tim Scott, from South Carolina, an African American, and Marco Rubio, from Florida, whose parents are Cubans. But Rubio identifies himself as white and Hispanic.
Book incorporation
In the beginning, senators relied on obstruction to block civil rights and labor law. Now it’s the new normal, exercised by Democrats and Republicans. Not much legislation is made. When the Republican Party is home to a congresswoman who reflects on Jewish laser beams implanted for “free space or something for high speed rails”, As a colleague said, it is unlikely to find common ground.
If the obstruction is abolished or modified, it remains to be seen. Although only a simple majority is needed to end it, it looks safe for now. Two Democrats have expressed opposition to changing the rules and the president agrees with the status quo.
If Democrats can get around obstruction through reconciliation, a process used for budgets that depends on a simple majority, calls to end obstruction are likely to ease. Otherwise, expect the obstructionist to remain in the front and center towards the semester of 2022. Keep the security key close at hand.