Vanderbilt University - Fascinating Insights Into Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (https://lnkd.in/eipX3PQg) - I crashed Jon Meacham's (https://lnkd.in/ebi32yKU) class at Vanderbilt tonight to hear Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Chancellor Daniel Diermeier did he introductions. Presidential Historian Jon Meacham and Former Senator Lamar Alexander presided over a discussion whose audience included former Senators Bill Frist and Bob Corker and other notables: 1) "This is the most dangerous period since WWII. Regan said that you earn peace through strength. Beating the Russians in Ukraine is the most important thing we have going on in the World right now." We are only spending 3% of GDP on the military. In WWII, in 1943 and 1944, more than 40% of US GDP was devoted to national defense 2) McConnell had polio as a kid. 3) He voted for Lyndon Baines Johnson for President (Democrat), over Barry Goldwater (Republican) because Goldwater was against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 4) He was present for the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 5) He was in attendance for Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. 6) He worked on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act with President Biden and was in attendance for its signing. It was a bipartisan effort. 7) He believes he was the only senior Republican in attendance for Beau Biden's Funeral. 8) He believes the filibuster rules should NOT be repealed as they are a form of guardrail that requires compromise and that this compromise leads to better policy. 9) The intent of the Supreme Court appointments during the first Trump Administration, from the Senate's perspective, was not to repeal Roe v. Wade, but to limit the "Administrative State" which was usurping the authority of the elected legislative and judicial branches of the US Government.
