The Hill calls them Washington, D.C.’s newest “odd couple.”
They are Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Barack H. Obama, the Democratic president of the United States of America.
McConnell has been saying nice things about the man he once pledged to make a “one-term president.” The one-term notion didn’t work out, as Obama was re-elected in 2012. But hey, life goes on.
I rather like the idea of these men becoming “friends,” even if it’s a relationship of convenience.
They aren’t the first national political leaders to link arms and find common ground in an Oscar Madison-Felix Unger sort of way.
Let’s go back to the 1960s, when Democratic President Lyndon Johnson and Republican Senate Leader Everett Dirksen teamed up to help enact the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts. How about when Republican President Ronald Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill would bash each other in public, but then toast each other over whiskey after hours? Democratic President Bill Clinton and GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich worked together to balance the federal budget. Republican President George W. Bush and Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy found common ground in pushing education reform through Congress.
See? It can be done, ladies and gentlemen.
McConnell and Obama are on the same page regarding international trade. The president, in fact, is finding his stiffest opposition coming from the left-wing base of his own party. But he’s got a pal on the other side of the aisle.
The arrangement doesn’t surprise some Capitol Hill hands. “It validates what McConnell has been saying for the last six and a half years. If the president wants to join us on something thatâs good for the country, we will work with him. This is an example of that,â said Don Stewart, McConnellâs spokesman.
Well, for what it’s worth, some of us out here in the Heartland are surprised.
And pleasantly so, at that.