Consider the fable of the scorpion and the frog — the scorpion, unable to ford a stream enlists the aid of a frog who can navigate the watery passage. When confronted with the frog’s fear that while riding safely on his back, the scorpion will sting him, he is assured by the deadly reptile that it would be an unlikely occurrence as they would both then surely die. Halfway through their venture, the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, and as they both begin to drown, shrugs off their demise with the statement , “It is in my nature.”
Now consider a variant of that tale — “The Scorpion and the Turtle” (and I assure you this is no cheap jibe at McConnell’s appearance) found in “Sketches of Persia, from the Journals of a Traveller in the East” by John Malcolm in 1827. In this version, the scorpion rides atop a turtle and midway through attempts to sting his conveyance, but is unable to pierce the shell, and they safely reach shore.
“Are you not the most wicked and ungrateful of reptiles? But for me you must either have given up your journey, or have been drowned in that stream, and what is my reward? If it had not been for the armour which God has given me, I should have been stung to death.” “Blame me not,” said the scorpion, in a supplicatory tone, “it is not my fault; it is that of my nature; it is a constitutional habit I have of stinging.”
Certainly, many politicians will seize upon any advantage given them to further their cause, as that is “in their nature,” and thus have much in common with the scorpion. The U.S. populace is much like the turtle, and the constitution is the shell which protects it from the deadly tendencies of the scorpion/politician. Strip the Constitution away or find a vulnerability in its shell, and we reduce our citizenry to the plight of the frog — unprotected and sure to drown midstream along with the politician.
Now consider McConnell specifically in the guise of the scorpion. Whether frog or turtle, he is bound and determined to find a way in which to indulge his “nature.” He has single-handedly used his power in absolute and defiant ways to find or create weaknesses in the shell that is our Constitution. A few examples:
- In the case of Garland, he twisted a statement by then-Senator Joe Biden into a hard and fast precedent for a time frame in determining whether Supreme Court appointments would even be heard toward the end of a President’s term. He then manipulated that “precedent” to a ridiculously long period (nearly 25% of that term) to support and insure his agendas of choosing conservative-only judges and negating anything which might be credited to Obama’s legacy.
- He once again rejected consideration of a bi-partisan proposal that the Mueller probe be protected, yet on the same day had the temerity to publish an op-ed on the need for bi-partisanship.
- Earlier in that same week he sought to identify any investigations into conflicts of interest and malfeasance on the part of the president as “Presidential harassment.”
He may not have invented obstructionism, but Mitch McConnell has certainly perfected it and has carried out a scorched Earth/zero sum gain policy in his dealings as the leader of his party in the Senate. Clearly, he is concerned that he has lost his lock-step partnership with the other house in Congress seeking to hide behind the suggestion of bi-partisanship. He is stung, however, by his own tenuous precedences and one-sided view of political comity, and thus has endangered us all by his actions which could drown us all in midstream. (Making matters worse, the winners in most of the mid-term elections tend away from any centrist nature in their respective parties and so any common ground is already shaky.)
All politicians have some scorpion in them, it is in their nature, but McConnell has shown that he is all scorpion all the time. The question before us all is whether we are the turtle or the frog — and considering the chinks McConnell has opened in the armor of the Constitution — can we even survive as the turtle?