Pundits Forget McConnell Needs Trump as Much as Vice Versa

A New York Times story on Tuesday describing the frosty relationship between President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has reignited speculation by the commentariat that the president is making a fatal error.

Washington Post assistant Outlook editor David Swerlick opined on CNN Tuesday that Trump “needs [McConnell] as much as anybody, if not more than anybody, to move his agenda in Congress.”

Swerlick pointed to what many regard as Trump’s greatest accomplishment so far — the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.

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“And it was McConnell who handed that to him on a silver platter by taking that opportunity away from President [Barack] Obama,” he said.

Stephen Hayes, editor in chief of The Weekly Standard, offered similar analysis Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report.”

“The president’s going to need Mitch McConnell in at least some kind of a relationship there, in order to get things done this fall,” he said.

Some experts argue, however, that the conventional wisdom misses the crucial fact that Trump and McConnell largely share the same agenda. The Senate Republican leader did not block former Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court as a gift to Trump. He made that politically risky decision — before it even became clear that Trump would be the nominee — because he wanted to maintain a conservative majority on the court.

And Trump largely adopted the Republican legislative agenda, the top two items of which are repealing Obamacare and overhauling the tax code. The same applies, to a lesser extent, with infrastructure spending. It would fall to McConnell’s own wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, to implement any bill Congress passed.

“The personal relationship doesn’t matter. They don’t need to date each other. They don’t need to like each other.”

Would McConnell sabotage his own agenda because he and Trump are not personally getting along?

“He would not,” said Elizabeth Letchworth, who served as Senate secretary for the Republican majority. “It makes no sense.”

Letchworth, who now is co-owner of the consulting firm Congressional Global Strategies, told LifeZette that the important dynamic is that both Trump and McConnell have a shared interest in passing legislation.

“The personal relationship doesn’t matter,” she said. “They don’t need to date each other. They don’t need to like each other.”

The Times story describes the deteriorating relationship in great deal. The men reportedly have not spoken in weeks, since an obscenity-filled phone call, and the paper quoted anonymous sources indicating that McConnell has expressed doubts about Trump’s ability to salvage his presidency.

The mutual hostility broke into the open a couple of weeks ago when McConnell told a gathering in his home state that the president’s inexperience led to unrealistic expectations. Trump responded by needling McConnell in public over his failure to guide an Obamacare replacement into law.

Letchworth agreed that Trump came to Washington without a firm understanding of the minutia of arcane Senate rules.

“That’s why you see a lot of the animosity,” she said. “And I wouldn’t even characterize it as animosity. I’d call it frustration.”

Candice Nelson, academic director of American University’s Campaign Management Institute, said McConnell and Trump are tethered on certain issues.

“That’s certainly true of tax reform,” she said.

But Nelson said there are issues where a dysfunctional personal relationship could hurt Trump’s priorities.

“Trump wants to build the wall,” she said. “I don’t know how much McConnell cares about that.”

But Nelson said Senate Republicans — particularly those facing re-election next year — want to have legislative accomplishments when voters pass judgment.

“If all they can say is ‘Gorsuch,’ that’s a problem,” she said. “To that extent, McConnell needs to work with Trump to get something done.”

Presidential historian Craig Shirley, whose book “Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative” hits bookstores on Monday, said Trump is hardly the first president to tangle with leading members of the legislative branch. He said former President George H.W. Bush had a poor relationship with then-Majority Leader George Mitchell because of the Maine Democrat’s duplicity.

Shirley pointed to an anecdote from Bob Woodward’s book “The Agenda,” in which then-President Bill Clinton had an expletive-laden exchange with Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) over a budget issue. And Newt Gingrich, then the Republican whip in the House of Representatives, led a GOP revolt against Bush’s tax flip-flop.

That relationship, Shirley said, was hampered by both policy and personality clashes.

“If Trump is going out of his way to make enemies in his own party, it becomes easier for them to go against the president,” he said.

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But Shirley predicted that Trump and McConnell eventually will patch up their differences.

“It will blow over because it has to blow over,” he said.

Letchworth, the political consultant, disputed another favorite claim of commentators — that Trump needs McConnell to stave off impeachment. She said that if no evidence of an impeachable offense emerges, the matter is unlikely even to come before the Senate. On the other hand, she said, Trump’s personal relationship with senators is irrelevant if compelling evidence did come to light.

“It wouldn’t matter whether they got all of the agenda items or none of them,” she said. “If he committed crime, that won’t matter.”

(photo credit, article image of Trump: Michael Vadon)