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Title details for The Price of Power by Michael Tackett - Available

The Price of Power

How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America, and Lost His Party

by Michael Tackett
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The first definitive biography of Mitch McConnell, revealing an intimate look at the personal and political life of one of the most powerful senators in American history.
In the long history of American government, few senators have wielded as much power as Kentucky's Mitch McConnell. That's no accident; he worked his entire life to cultivate his dominance.

In The Price of Power, award-winning journalist Michael Tackett pulls back the curtain on one of the most influential figures to ever set foot in the American Senate, offering you an intimate, personal view of his life and career. Drawing on thousands of pages of archival materials, letters, and more than 100 interviews with associates, colleagues, and McConnell himself, Tackett pieces together the story of McConnell's early life, his formative battle with polio as a young child, and details his forty-plus-year career as one of the Senate's most impactful leaders.

A lifelong Republican, McConnell was known as a pragmatic moderate legislator when he joined the Senate in 1985. Tackett traces his steady rightward drift, as McConnell's politics evolved with his masterful ability to consolidate and wield power. But such success comes at a cost. The Trump years brought with them the rise of an almost unrecognizable Republican party, suffused with a reactive populism that even McConnell himself would struggle to control.

Featuring expert reporting, unprecedented access, and never-before-published revelations, The Price of Power is an inside portrait of exactly that—what it takes to achieve power, maintain it, deploy it, and, finally, watch it slip out of your hands.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 29, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781668005866

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781668005866
      • File size: 35289 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      December 15, 2024
      The power player you barely know. Senate Majority Leader McConnell has long made plain his disdain for Donald Trump. He brings his contempt to the next level in this deeply researched biography by Tackett, a veteran journalist. The Kentucky senator calls Trump "this sleazeball" and "not very smart, irascible, nasty, just about every quality you would not want somebody to have." So that raises the question: Why in the world would McConnell not only keep Trump's political future alive by voting to acquit him in the impeachment trial after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack but also endorse him in the 2024 election? Tackett offers insights into how this ruthless tactician navigated his career. McConnell has always looked ahead, unsentimentally and rarely daunted by contradictions, criticism, or even personal slights--Trump has publicly mocked "Old Crow" McConnell and taken racist shots at the senator's wife, Elaine Chao, the former Transportation Secretary--with an eye on doing whatever it takes to assume or retain power. McConnell's evolution, as chronicled by Tackett, might surprise readers: He had been a passionate advocate of civil rights, an ally of public employees in a tough 1977 race (later conceding he was ashamed of his "open pandering for labor support"), a champion for strict campaign finance limits, and a scold for the notion that every Supreme Court nominee deserved an up-or-down vote. History will note his refusal to allow even a hearing on President Barack Obama's 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland, a power move by the ultimate power player. What makes this biography so fascinating is the fulsome access McConnell offered Tackett, a journalist he had not known beforehand. A student of history, McConnell took a chance on giving an unsparing, credible account of his remarkable life. Tackett delivers. A superb insider's portrait of the sphinx of the Senate.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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