Mitch McConnell has been around a while. Reagan was in the White House when the young Kentucky politician first arrived on Capitol Hill.
And it’s the politics of Reagan which have shaped Mitch McConnell in the decades since.
The 82-year-old has led the Republicans on ‘the Hill’ as majority and minority leader through many Conservative undulations: Reagan, both Bushes, the Tea-Party movement, then Trump.
Read more: McConnell stepping down after freezing mid-sentence in public
He’s channelled them all on the Hill but his core has always been the traditionalist Republican politics of Reagan – globalist American leadership. He’s maintained the traditional conservative guardrails as the party has swayed one way or the other over the years.
He did not endorse Donald Trump in the 2016 election campaign. But once Trump became president, he enabled him on the Hill, to a point.
That he has taken the decision to step back on his own terms is to his credit, but it was not without pressure.
His age and visible stumbles became a problem and prompted a broader debate about the average age of America’s politicians in Congress – it’s 57.9 incidentally.
In announcing his retirement on the floor of the Senate, he said: “One of life’s most under-appreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter…”
A hint to others maybe? Biden? Even Trump?
His departure, combined with the recent appointment of Trump ally Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House of Representatives, will mark a shift for the right in America.
It will further erode the ability of traditional conservatives to resist the more controversial politics of Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
If you buy into the idea that Trump, in a return to the White House, would be freer to enable his more extreme policies, well then McConnell’s absence will help him.