Political currency

When Robert Caro undertook to chronicle the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson, he needed two volumes to cover Johnson’s life up to Congress, and then 1,167 pages on his years in the U.S. Senate, including his decade as the Senate’s Democratic leader. Michael Tackett of the Associated Press, on the other hand, has encapsulated the entire life of Mitch McConnell—including his record-setting 18-year tenure as GOP leader—in one modestly sized volume.

The Price of Power (Simon & Schuster, 416 pp.) is not an “official” or “authorized” biography, but it was written with McConnell’s collaboration. Tackett’s sources include the leader himself, long-time staff and associates, plus Presidents George W. Bush and Joe Biden. That access gives insight into McConnell’s childhood in the segregated South, particularly an early and devastating struggle with polio (which would result in physical challenges that returned in old age). We get few details on McConnell’s personal life, including his first marriage, his three children, and his hobbies (indeed, the book suggests he doesn’t have any—politics is his only passion).

Instead, the book charts his relentless pursuit of public office—first as a county executive in his hometown of Louisville, Ky., then in an upset win for U.S. Senate in 1984, and later his emergence as rules committee chair and eventual GOP leader.

Along the way, McConnell delivers a master class in gaining, holding, and exercising power, with lines such as, “The person who knows the most about a subject is most likely to achieve a result.” Explaining an early electoral maneuver to damage a prospective opponent: “My experience has been that you make your own luck.” When attacked in a campaign, “If your opponent ‘flips a pebble at you, hurl a boulder back.’” As the last line suggests, it’s not always pretty—McConnell is not shy about raising buckets of money to spend on negative advertising.

Doubtless McConnell’s greatest legislative success has been on judicial confirmations. His signature achievement was holding Antonin Scalia’s vacated seat on the Supreme Court for President Trump to fill with Neil Gorsuch. Such has been his impact that Justice Samuel Alito, in an interview with Tackett, calls it “The McConnell Court.”

A favorite boogeyman of the left, and variously both hero and disappointment to the right, McConnell exits leadership in January after defining GOP politics for a generation. Tackett chronicles that service with admirable detachment and insight.