The importance of the long game

Commentary by Ted Potrikus

Here’s how I picture Mitch McConnell in his college days:

“Hey Mitch!” call his pals. “There’s a big protest march down in the quad. Posters, bullhorns, and everything! C’mon!”

“Nah,” says Mitch. “You guys go on ahead and have fun. I’m gonna stay in and study this book I found by a guy called Machiavelli.”

A few years later, there’s Mitch McConnell, local lawyer and burgeoning politician.

“Mitch,” says his local party boss. “Rally down at the town square. Press is gonna be there, I think it’ll be a good photo op for you. Hold up a sign and make people think you’re actually doing something about their problem.”

“No thanks,” Mitch says. “I’ve got this book about the rules of the United States Senate and I’m really into it. I’m staying in to read.”

Then, like water does, when he got elected to the Senate in 1984 he assumed the shape of his container and started to become the Senate. He played the long game masterfully. It’s the only way to take effective reins in a Congress where everyone wants to be in charge but few have the patience necessary to win the prize. You’re plotting every move five or more years in advance, nudging the dominoes to fall in the direction you need but always based on the rules. As with any long game, there will be setbacks and disappointments along the way, some of them soul-crushing. Sometimes you have to force a hand or two, but if you want to stick around, you can’t make yelling into a bullhorn, posting pithy Twitter tweets, or attending rally after rally to be your bread and butter. You have to put in the boring work that no one sees.

Hence the decisions handed down in the last week by the Supreme Court of the United States. Pure long-game strategy brought to stunning fruition thanks to any number of factors; a fragile domino chain whose building blocks historians may one day trace back to the Reagan administration when SCOTUS members started to age out or die. One at a time. On a schedule no one could predict, but everyone was watching – some more intently than others.