Name: Gerth: McConnell attacking Obama over 'tradition' is a laugh
Brand: courier-journal.com
SKU: courier-journal-com-25
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

Gerth: McConnell attacking Obama over 'tradition' is a laugh

preview

Louisville Courier JournalView CommentsMitch McConnell said Monday night that former President Barack Obama “should have kept his mouth shut” and that it was “classless” for him to criticize President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic."You had your shot, you were there for eight years. I think the tradition that the Bushes set up —&nbsp;of not critiquing the president who comes after you —&nbsp;is a good tradition,” McConnell told Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, on a Trump campaign livestream.Well blow me down.McConnell is worried about tradition?He has spent his entire 13 years as the Senate Republican leader destroying every norm and tradition the formerly august old body had. But now he’s worried about tradition.He’s got his knickers in a wad because a former president has rightly called out the current president, who McConnell has enabled for the last 3 ½ years, for turning the pandemic response into an “absolute chaotic disaster?”Read more:Let’s remember the ways McConnell has broken with tradition to destroy what used to be the world’s greatest deliberative body.He was the one who made the filibuster the rule, rather than the exception, turning virtually every close vote into a partisan squabble and making it nearly impossible for the Congress to do anything.McConnell couldn't care less about tradition;&nbsp;only about scoring political points.&nbsp;He was the one who has politicized the federal court system like no other U.S. Senate leader before him.McConnell did this first by blocking scores of lower court judges appointed by Obama, leaving the federal bench woefully undermanned.More Gerth:And then his greatest break with tradition came when he refused to allow a vote on U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland’s elevation to the U.S. Supreme Court and blamed it on “the Biden rule,” which he made up.Completely made up.That alleged rule called for the Senate not to fill any Supreme Court vacancies during an election year.The crazy thing is that he can’t even abide by his own made-up rules.During an appearance last year in Paducah, when asked what he’d do if a Supreme Court justice died in 2020, creating a vacancy, McConnell paused, took a sip of an iced tea, and said, "Oh, we'd fill it."He's sat silently as Trump and Attorney General William Barr have made the Justice Department simply a tool of the president breaking a long tradition of it being a somewhat independent arm that tries to hold the administration to account.&nbsp;He has ceded all role in oversight of the president, leaving Sen. Mitt Romney the only Republican in the Senate willing to take on the president when he errs.&nbsp;In 2004, he broke with Senate tradition and campaigned against then Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. Before that, both parties Senate conferences had stayed out of reelections involving Senate leaders from the other party as a courtesy.According to a recent story in the New Yorker, Jane Meyer wrote that McConnell once let&nbsp;my former colleague, James Carroll, listen in on a conversation with Obama. Carroll was shocked by what he heard and the disdain he heard in McConnell’s voice.“McConnell said a couple of words, like ‘Yup,’ ‘O.K.,’ and ‘Bye,’ but he never said, ‘Mr. President,’” Carroll told her. “There was just a total lack of respect even for the office.”During the impeachment trial of Trump, McConnell tossed away the Senate’s traditional role of impartial jury and coordinated the president’s defense with White House lawyers.But McConnell is not the only one who has eschewed tradition.Trump has done that&nbsp;as well.Past presidents have been somewhat circumspect about attacking their predecessors.Not Trump.Throughout his term, Trump has attacked Obama mercilessly, most recently claiming he was part of the “biggest political crime in American history.” When asked what exactly the crime was, Trump refused to say and attacked the reporter instead.And as Trump has so ham-handedly handled this pandemic, he has tried to blame Obama who, by the way, has been out of office for nearly a full term.“I started with an obsolete, broken system from a previous administration,” Trump said last month. &nbsp;Another day, Trump insanely tried to blame Obama for failing to have adequate tests available – for a virus that wasn’t even seen before last December.“Our stockpiles were empty. We had horrible stockpiles, we had horrible ventilators, we had very few of them too ... CDC had obsolete tests, old tests, broken tests, and a mess,” Trump sputtered.Meanwhile, Trump's administration didn’t act decisively to obtain personal protective gear for doctors, nurses and first responders. It fumbled the rolling out of coronavirus tests, and it has led by sending out conflicting messages about the danger of the coronavirus.Trump’s handling of the pandemic has been, as Obama said, an&nbsp;“absolute chaotic disaster.” And while it may be breaking from tradition for Obama to say it, somebody needed to do it.Joseph Gerth&nbsp;can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at&nbsp;jgerth@courierjournal.com. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today:&nbsp;courier-journal.com/josephg.View Comments

Louisville Courier JournalView CommentsMitch McConnell said Monday night that former President Barack Obama “should have kept his mouth shut” and that it was “classless” for him to criticize President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic."You had your shot, you were there for eight years. I think the tradition that the Bushes set up —&nbsp;of not critiquing the president who comes after you —&nbsp;is a good tradition,” McConnell told Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, on a Trump campaign livestream.Well blow me down.McConnell is worried about tradition?He has spent...

Gerth: McConnell attacking Obama over 'tradition' is a laugh

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS