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In his post-election Heritage Foundation speech, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, "I re-extend an offer that's been on the table for two years to cooperate on shared goals -- because ultimately this isn't about an election; it's about doing what's best for our country."

Prior to the Nov. 2 election, McConnell told the National Journal's Major Garrett, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

At the same time he said he would be willing to compromise on important issues "if President Obama does a Clintonian backflip," referring to how the former president responded after a tough mid-term election in 1994.

President Obama took a swipe to McConnell's remarks regarding the 2012 election.

"The Republican leader of the Senate said that his main goal over the next two years -- his number one priority -- is to beat me in the next election," Mr. Obama said. "I mean, keep in mind he didn't say his number one priority was put more people back to work, help more small businesses succeed...."

To be fair, McConnell and his party have talked extensively (although without many specifics) about their priorities, such as repealing the health care reform bill, ending bailouts, reducing spending, and preserving tax cuts for wealthy Americans, and they would argue that those goals are for the good of the country. But does he put what's best for the country before party politics? As pointed out by his local paper, The Courier-Journal, McConnell has some explaining to do.

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In his new memoir, Decision Points, the former president tells of a meeting he held in September 2006 with Mr. McConnell, then the Republican whip in the Senate. The occupation of Iraq was going horribly, American and Iraqi casualties were rising sharply, costs had mushroomed into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and Iraq was teetering on the brink of full-scale sectarian civil war. Mr. McConnell was concerned, and he gave the president his advice.

But why was he concerned? It wasn't because of bloodshed, destruction, a hemorrhaging budget or a slide toward disaster. He was fearful that the morass in Iraq would cause the Republican Party to take a beating in the approaching mid-term elections. And what was his advice? He urged the president to “bring some troops home from Iraq” to lessen the political risks, Mr. Bush writes.


This incident, which Sen. McConnell's office has not denied, shines brightly on the contemptible hypocrisy and obsessive partisanship that have come to mark the senator's time in office.

At the time that Sen. McConnell was privately advising Mr. Bush to reduce troop levels in Iraq, he was elsewhere excoriating congressional Democrats who had urged the same thing. “The Democrat[ic] leadership finally agrees on something — unfortunately it's retreat,” Sen. McConnell had said in a statement on Sept. 5, 2006, about a Democratic letter to Mr. Bush appealing for cuts in troop levels. Sen. McConnell, who publicly was a stout defender of the war and Mr. Bush's conduct of the conflict, accused the Democrats of advocating a position that would endanger Americans and leave Iraqis at the mercy of al-Qaida.

Unless he is prepared to call a former president of his own party a liar, Mr. McConnell has a choice. He can admit that he did not actually believe the Iraq mission was vital to American security, regardless of what he said at the time. Or he can explain why the fortunes of the Republican Party are of greater importance than the safety of the United States.

As usual, Sen. McConnell's political instincts were right. The Republicans did lose control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats in the November 2006 election. In Louisville, the war's unpopularity helped John Yarmuth unseat five-term Republican Rep. Anne Northup in the 3rd Congressional District.

But the public has a right to expect its leaders to pursue loftier goals than partisan success. When voters hear Sen. McConnell these days — at a time of continuing economic hardship — say that Republicans' top priority must be to limit President Obama to a single term, they should ask themselves: Why does he place greater value on that purely political goal than on American citizens' well-being?

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