The New Year will bring a major change to the balance of power on Capitol Hill, with the House flipping firmly into Democratic hands while the Senate ticks slightly further into the red. In congressional offices, new members are measuring the drapes while their departing colleagues are plotting their next steps.
After twelve years of service, Senator Claire McCaskill and her staff are in the process of packing boxes. McCaskill was elected to the Senate from Missouri, in 2006, after serving as a prosecutor and holding other state offices there. She’s been considered one of the most moderate centrist Democrats in the Senate. But in 2016 Missouri voters went for Donald Trump by a whopping nineteen points, and, in last month’s midterms, McCaskill lost to the Republican Josh Hawley.
During McCaskill’s last week in office, the New Yorker staff writer Susan B. Glasser paid her a visit, which was recorded for The New Yorker Radio Hour. McCaskill was very outspoken throughout their conversation—it’s a lot easier to be outspoken after you’ve lost.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
The room that we’re sitting in right now, the reception room, is Claire McCaskill’s office, filled with, of course, Missouri’s most famous odds-defying Democrat, Harry Truman. We’re sitting right now beneath a picture of the famous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline on the day of Harry Truman’s 1948 Presidential-election victory. McCaskill did not have a “Dewey Beats Truman” moment a couple weeks ago, on Election Day, but, arguably, even with her career as a Democrat at a time when Republicans were rapidly gaining control over most of the political offices in Missouri, she’d already defied the odds a number of times before.
Nice to see you, Senator McCaskill. How are you?
Oh, good. All right.
So, in the spirit of blunt-spoken exit interviews, we’re sitting in your really lovely corner office here in the Capitol. Is there anything that you won’t miss about this place?
Oh, my gosh, yes. The brutal schedule. I used to joke that Southwest was my school bus, and I’d get on Southwest every Monday morning and come home on Southwest every Thursday night. I will miss not getting Companion Pass by June, because I almost always get my Companion Pass fairly quickly because I’m on Southwest so often. And, in not having the freedom of a schedule that you can set, that is set by others, I won’t miss the “gotcha” stuff that has become more prevalent in the twelve years I’ve been here. Obviously, I’ll miss the people, and I’ll really miss the work, and I will miss the opportunity to try to move the needle on things I believe in and, obviously, helping people at home with problems that we do pretty well at.
Is the Senate a worse place today than it was in 2006?
I think “worse” is a loaded term. I think it is more in jeopardy of being marginalized by the American people, because it doesn’t work very well. I think people around here, we get so caught up in how dysfunctional we are—O.K., like, this is a good example. This week, we’re now doing a C.R., a continuing resolution, instead of a budget. And now the big question of the day: Is that going to be one week or two weeks? Really? And, because it’s become the new normal, many members have never been here when there was actually an appropriations process that was more open and more debatable and had more amendations for the budget.
It blew me away—Congress has basically stopped doing this core part of its job.
And, by the way, when we do it, it has been done by a handful of people in the back room.
Yeah, it’s incredible. My son asked me the other day, my thirteen-year-old, if I thought that speed readers would get a lot of jobs on Capitol Hill because they’re always releasing those huge bills at the last minute. I thought that was such a cute idea—you know, I’m not aware of, like, a roomful of speed readers.
It’s a good idea. The problem is they wouldn’t want to hire them, because the people who write the bills don’t want anybody to read them. The people who are there, there is a handful of people who have actually read everything, and the last thing they want is somebody digging through it all. Same thing with legislation. Legislation is now being written in the Majority Leader’s office instead of in committee.
And so the more dysfunctional this place gets, the more people out there in the real world are going, “Well, you guys suck. You guys are terrible. All of you, pox on all your house.” And so the price we’re paying is increased cynicism by the American people. And that’s not a good thing. I mean, that is something that’s very dangerous for this democracy. One positive thing that could come out of the Trump era is that more elected officials would realize that people will be forgiving of you if you say something stupid once, or twice, or three times, or, you know, several times a year. But the lack of authenticity, I think, is really problematic for a lot of people around this building. They are so poll-driven and so scripted, and then I think it’s easier to swipe with a broad brush and say, “Well, they’re all phony.”
Some people have described President Trump as almost like an accelerant to putting those trends on turbo charge when it comes to Washington. How has he made Congress different in the last two years?
I don’t think it’s fair to blame him, because it was plenty bad before he arrived on the scene. That’s one of the reasons he arrived on the scene, by the way.
That’s right. And Congress has, of course, always been unpopular. We should note that, duh, Congress has never been a super-functional place before.
We’ve never been anywhere close to firefighters on the approval scale. I mean, we are nurses.
You’re fighting with journalists at the bottom of the barrel.
Exactly. On the other hand, because of almost the cult of [Trump’s] power in the Republican Party, my colleagues that are Republicans that used to spend some time in the middle working to get things done have really kind of gone into their offices and shut their doors.
You tweeted the other day, “What have you done with Lindsey Graham?”
Yeah, no, we are worried about Lindsey. Lindsey, you know, I’m sure he would say the same thing about me. That would drive me crazy from time to time, but I also knew that, when there were things that we could agree on, he was a great partner and somebody who was fearless about whether or not it was the right thing to do in terms of the Republican brand. It doesn’t feel like that Lindsey is around much right now. Now, maybe he’ll resurface, but it feels like he’s gone away, and all of us are mourning him.
Do you think that the other Republican members—I mean, virtually all of them were against Trump in the 2016 primaries and, you know, there’s endless citations by people like me of all the times they called Trump a kook and unsuited to be President and the like. But have these folks fundamentally changed their minds? Is it purely opportunistic? I mean, are they just no longer free traders anymore, or they’re just waiting him out?
They’re waiting him out. I mean, this guy would be, he should hear the way these guys talk about him behind his back. You know, I’m sure that would unleash all manner of tweets, but—and I would never name any names—
But I’m sure it’s people including many Missouri Republicans.
Oh, no question. Oh, no question. And this is the thing. I mean, the danger for my Republican colleagues that know that many of the things that Trump has done are not their values, it’s not the way they see governing. It’s now his party. Period. And I believe there will be a time down the road that some of them will rue the day that they did not speak up more forcefully, did not say, “Wait a minute, this idea of using national security as an excuse for a really aggressive trade war with no exit plan”—and how about the deficit? You know, they’ve just abandoned any attempt. And that is really going to hurt us sooner rather than later because, as interest rates go up, that budget process is going to get more and more difficult. So it is frustrating to watch. I understand it on an intellectual level. But it doesn’t mean that it’s not sad.
Well, it’s interesting, so, you’re highlighting the policy conundrum, which is part of it, right? He is an outsider to their party. He’s come in. He’s won. He doesn’t really stand for the same things that have been Republican orthodoxy. Things like free trade, Russia, arguably, the deficit. Then there’s also kind of the character issue, which may become more ripe next year, depending on where these investigations go. Will Mitch McConnell stand with him until the end of the end of the end? I mean, theirs is kind of an unlikely alliance, too, right?
Mitch McConnell, I think, will stand with him as long as it is in the interests of the majority of the Senate right now, which is Republicans. He looks at everything through the lens of, How can I stay majority floor leader? How can I become majority floor leader, and how can I stay majority floor leader?
Well, I think that’s right. A lot of people don’t understand the thing about Mitch McConnell is that his dream, unlike a lot of the rest the Senate, was not to be President; it really is to be Senate Majority Leader. Now, L.B.J. at the height of his power is his model, right?
That’s exactly right. And everything he’s done, and everything he will do, will be done with that focus. He is fighting with Trump only when he thinks it’s necessary to protect the Republican members of the Senate. He will challenge Trump only when he thinks it’s in the best interests of the Republican members of the Senate. He will be quiet and say there’s nothing wrong with Trump, or pivot and deflect if he thinks it’s in the best interests of the Republican members of the U.S. Senate. And so that’s what will be the determining effect for Mitch McConnell, is how he can stay in power.
So you obviously represented Missouri. A lot of people say you’re one of the last of the Trump-country Democrats, that in the future it’s just going to be impossible to win in a place that has the demographics of a Missouri, with this heavy representation of rural counties and the like. Is there a future for Democrats in a place like Missouri?
Oh, sure. I got forty-five per cent of the vote. And I think, if I had never been in politics, and had an interesting résumé, and was an outsider, I think it would have been even closer. So this is a tough patch for Democrats in Missouri, but I do not believe it’s the end of the Democrats in Missouri. I think, you know, it wasn’t that long ago, it was November of 2016, when the majority of the statewide office holders in Missouri were Democrats. Well, a state doesn’t change that much that quickly. This is it. This is a thing that was exacerbated by, you know—I mean, and let’s give the guy who ran against me some credit. He’s young, he’s telegenic, he’s articulate, he clearly is intelligent, and he took direction well by his campaign team and stayed very disciplined in the last three months of the campaign.
And so the Kavanaugh thing helped him. The caravan helped him. So I think there were a lot of intangibles that helped Josh Hawley win this election.
Was the caravan made up? Was it a fake issue?
Well, no, I don’t think it is. I mean, there are now six thousand people that are poor and tired and hungry and living in squalor trying to get into the United States.
Do you need the military to fight six thousand people?
I think all of that might have been political optics. I do think that the caravan presented a problem; it just wasn’t a problem that was presented to the American people that, somehow, we needed to have the military on the border to—what? Mow ’em down as they came across the border? Shoot ’em? I mean, that was, like, that was made-for-television bullshit.
Trump came in really hard against you. He was there twice in Missouri in the last week alone. Did you do something to piss him off?
No, I just think they looked at the races that they thought they could win to hold the Senate. I think Mitch McConnell did this. I think Mitch McConnell directed this. I made the joke during the campaign that he’d come so often I figured he was building a golf course somewhere in Missouri, because Donald Trump never goes anywhere that frequently unless there’s golf involved. But it was painful because I knew that he was building enthusiasm on his side. About ninety days before the election, we felt pretty good. And then the enthusiasm on their side just popped up.
Around the Kavanaugh thing?
And around his visits.
And his visits, interesting. What about your party, though? Democrats have gone ahead and reëlected Chuck Schumer here on the Senate side to be Majority Leader. Nancy Pelosi looks like she will be elected Speaker of the House. This is not exactly a fresh new face of leadership for the Party. Are they the right people to challenge Trump?
Oh, I don’t—I mean, I think Schumer is really good at his job. And I publicly opposed Harry Reid and his reëlection at one point, just because I didn’t think he was the right guy for the job at that moment. I think Chuck’s the right guy for the job at this moment because he is very good at trying to pull people together when it really matters and giving people the space to vote against the Party line and not get on ’em. I mean, he was great with me whenever I needed to vote against most of the Democratic caucus because I had a difference of opinion with him. He never made me feel uncomfortable or that I was somehow betraying him or my fellow-Democrats. So it really more is about who is coming up that is inspiring. Who are the young voices and faces that are also inspiring.
But, also, is it who they are and, you know, is the center of gravity changed in the party? If Republicans have seen their party sort of taken over by Trump, there is this interesting split. You know, people like you are more and more a vanishing breed when it comes from, you know, senators who are from Republican-leaning states. Is it still possible to—is there a center?
Oh, yeah. There will always be a center. It’s not heavily populated right now. But when the pendulum swings back it will be more populated. You know Kyrsten Sinema, who won in Arizona, is a moderate; Beto lost in Texas as a progressive. Their states are very similar in terms of their makeup. And Kyrsten said, “I want to work together. I’m a moderate.” She was an unabashed moderate. Beto was not that. And so if you wanted to make the argument you could say, “Well, wait a minute, if this is all about just us being purely progressive, then what’s up?” Why did Kyrsten Sinema win and Beto lose?
So I think both of them are examples of new faces that will remind people that we have good ideas and that we get it and we understand how frustrated they are about their health care and about their wages.
And that we can actually be helpful. And I’m fairly optimistic about that.
You know, I love that you’re ending this conversation on an optimistic note. We don’t get a lot of optimism in Washington these days, I have to say, but I love looking around your office, which is in a partial state of deconstruction. I guess this is your last week.
No, I think—well, it depends on the C.R.
Well, it was supposed to be the last week.
Well, I guess it depends on when we pretend that we’re actually getting a budget done. I think it will be next week, or perhaps the following week. But it’s late enough in the game that I’ve begun packing up, so it is a little bit—a lot of my favorite items have already been packed away.
Although you still have a fantastic collection of Harry Truman memorabilia, if you could call it that.
I am such a fangirl of Harry Truman. I mean, if everybody could be more like Harry Truman was. . . . Imagine what it took for Harry Truman to integrate the armed services. Imagine what the polling said. Can you imagine how many people in America at that moment said, “Yeah, it’s a really good idea for us to integrate the armed services”? He just did it. When he left office he was very unpopular, and now everybody wants to be like him. I am embarrassingly well-informed on Harry Truman, and I—the one thing that he always did that I swore I would do was just speak plainly, and I think it is one medicine that can cure some of the illness that is around this place. That’s who he was. He was never afraid to say exactly what he thought. He never used a five-dollar word when a nickel word was good enough. He spoke in plain, declarative sentences. He answered questions. I feel good about my effort to emulate him in that regard. And I’m gonna have a lot of fun continuing to do that for years to come.
