“I have many faults,” intoned Mitch McConnell after announcing he would be surrendering his leadership of the Senate GOP at the end of the 2024 term. “Misunderstanding politics is not one of them.”

That McConnell would provide this assessment of his own career was predictable. He was just echoing the take of the average GOP establishment politician or D.C. operative. He was also completely wrong.

In fact, throughout his career, few people understood politics more poorly, and of the many flaws he had as a leader, his misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of politics was perhaps his worst.

Start with the fact that he had an incredible 6 percent (not a misprint) approval rating and 60 percent disapproval among American adults in a recent poll from respected pollster Monmouth (even among GOP voters, he was at just 10 percent approval!) Even politicians who have committed sex offenses have polled better. But while these ratings were particularly anemic even for McConnell, voters’ disregard of McConnell was par for the course. For years, even among the raft of unpopular GOP politicians, McConnell stood out as the most unpopular major political figure in America.

“Oh,” McConnell’s defenders would always say. “You don’t understand. He’s a master of Senate procedure.” These people seem to think that this skill, important though it is, is somehow what “understanding politics” entails. They could not be more wrong.

McConnell is great at counting votes, seeing what egos need massaging, making the threats he needs to make, etc. These are very useful skills for climbing the greasy pole in D.C. — and for a party whip whose job it is to wrangle votes — but they are not the primary skills needed for a party leader who sets the agenda. McConnell........

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