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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The two messages, which preceded European elections over the weekend in which the far right fared relatively well, may seem complementary. They\u2019re not. Indeed, while Biden\u2019s speech echoed Ronald Reagan and tapped deep veins of American patriotism, pluralism, civic duty and community, McConnell\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, America and our allies face some of the gravest threats to our security since Axis forces marched across Europe and the Pacific,\u201d McConnell wrote. \u201cAnd as these threats grow, some of the same forces that hampered our response in the 1930s have re-emerged.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s hampering U.S. capacity and emboldening China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, McConnell said, is an aversion to investing in military deterrence. \u201cRebuilding the arsenal of democracy would demonstrate to America\u2019s allies and adversaries alike that our commitment to the stable order of international peace and prosperity is rock-solid.\u201d McConnell wrote that \u201cnothing else will suffice\u201d to put Democracy\u2019s global power back on track.<\/p>\n
There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of McConnell\u2019s belief in assertive internationalism. But you can see just how inadequate \u2014 \u201cdelusional\u201d may not be too strong a term \u2014 his analysis is simply by granting McConnell\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.\u2019s other European allies vulnerable to Trumpist corruption and Russian aggression.<\/p>\n
McConnell may not like Vladimir Putin but the ascendent wing of his party surely does. His party\u2019s leader, Donald Trump, slavishly admires Russia\u2019s 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 \u2014 whether all at once or gradually. North Korea, led by Trump\u2019s 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\u2019s former national security adviser John Bolton said Trump \u201cdoesn\u2019t have any idea what to do in the Middle East in this situation.\u201d (The alternative, in which Trump does have a clue, influenced by his desire for cash from his Saudi friends, is more alarming.)<\/p>\n
Far worse, of course, is MAGA\u2019s 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\u2019s first term, MAGA operatives are planning a more disciplined regime under what one MAGA henchman euphemistically calls \u201cradical constitutionalism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Faced with his party\u2019s 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 \u2014 Trump\u2019s MAGA \u2014 goes unacknowledged in McConnell\u2019s essay. Instead, McConnell pretends that democracy can be bolstered in a budget line.<\/p>\n
If America\u2019s authoritarians win in November, McConnell will be promptly kicked to the curb. He is as irrelevant to Trump\u2019s demented dreams as he is to democracy\u2019s defense. Instead, the future will belong to the likes of Steve Bannon, the dodgy former financier who wears his grift on his multiple sleeves. \u201cAll victory to MAGA,\u201d Bannon declared last week after he was directed to jail for having defied a lawful congressional subpoena.<\/p>\n
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\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n
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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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