Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Joe Biden made back-to-back defenses of democracy last week, but one of their rallying cries simply underscored democracy’s peril. On Thursday, the anniversary of D-Day, McConnell published a call to preserve democracy by increasing military spending and defeating isolationism. In a speech delivered Friday atop the cliffs scaled by U.S. Army rangers in 1944, Biden pleaded with Americans to honor the sacrifices of D-Day by renewing their commitment to democracy.
The two messages, which preceded European elections over the weekend in which the far right fared relatively well, may seem complementary. They’re not. Indeed, while Biden’s speech echoed Ronald Reagan and tapped deep veins of American patriotism, pluralism, civic duty and community, McConnell’s essay in the New York Times was just the most recent in a litany of evasions of responsibility by a leader whose party has succumbed to anti-democratic forces.
“Today, America and our allies face some of the gravest threats to our security since Axis forces marched across Europe and the Pacific,” McConnell wrote. “And as these threats grow, some of the same forces that hampered our response in the 1930s have re-emerged.”
What’s hampering U.S. capacity and emboldening China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, McConnell said, is an aversion to investing in military deterrence. “Rebuilding the arsenal of democracy would demonstrate to America’s allies and adversaries alike that our commitment to the stable order of international peace and prosperity is rock-solid.” McConnell wrote that “nothing else will suffice” to put Democracy’s global power back on track.
There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of McConnell’s belief in assertive internationalism. But you can see just how inadequate — “delusional” may not be too strong a term — his analysis is simply by granting McConnell’s point. What if the U.S. commenced a massive military build-up, and every single investment was a technological success and strategic triumph? Where would that leave us?
The answer is pretty much where we currently are: Imperiled by an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party and its aggressively corrupt faction on the Supreme Court. It’s not just that a MAGA restoration would enable Russian troops, including hardened criminals, to rape, murder and kidnap their way across Ukraine. A MAGA victory in November would leave the U.S.’s other European allies vulnerable to Trumpist corruption and Russian aggression.
McConnell may not like Vladimir Putin but the ascendent wing of his party surely does. His party’s leader, Donald Trump, slavishly admires Russia’s leader. In addition, Trump has made it clear that he understands little and cares less about the fate of Taiwan and, if elected president, might well cede it to China — whether all at once or gradually. North Korea, led by Trump’s unhinged paramour in Pyongyang, is no doubt eager for the return of a mentally unbalanced and easily manipulated U.S. president. As for Iran, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton said Trump “doesn’t have any idea what to do in the Middle East in this situation.” (The alternative, in which Trump does have a clue, influenced by his desire for cash from his Saudi friends, is more alarming.)
Far worse, of course, is MAGA’s plan to erect a Christian nationalist thugocracy in the U.S. and pursue a campaign of lawless vengeance against political opponents. Unlike the serial incompetence of Trump’s first term, MAGA operatives are planning a more disciplined regime under what one MAGA henchman euphemistically calls “radical constitutionalism.”
Faced with his party’s authoritarian appetites, McConnell has lacked the courage of former Representative Liz Cheney or even the whimpering clarity of GOP Senator Mitt Romney. The greatest threat democracy faces — Trump’s MAGA — goes unacknowledged in McConnell’s essay. Instead, McConnell pretends that democracy can be bolstered in a budget line.
If America’s authoritarians win in November, McConnell will be promptly kicked to the curb. He is as irrelevant to Trump’s demented dreams as he is to democracy’s defense. Instead, the future will belong to the likes of Steve Bannon, the dodgy former financier who wears his grift on his multiple sleeves. “All victory to MAGA,” Bannon declared last week after he was directed to jail for having defied a lawful congressional subpoena.
Americans are familiar with such weird fascist locutions, mostly via bad writing about dystopian regimes in movies and on television. Trump promises to usher in a season of bad writing like we’ve never seen. Having failed at the most vital task of his long career, McConnell would be left reading along in horror with the rest of the civilized world.
____
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. politics and policy. Previously, he was executive editor for the Week and a writer for Rolling Stone.
___
©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com/opinion. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
KeyWords:: 019c1803-7911-43c0-b2b0-ff91dbf8853f
019c1803 7911 43c0 b2b0 ff91dbf8853f
BC-WILKINSON-COLUMN:BLO
BC WILKINSON COLUMN BLO
