Mitch McConnell

My original The Long Game: A Memoir audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

I listened to Senator Mitch McConnell’s The Long Game: A Memoir in two days as the book moved quickly weaving between his personal life, worldwide events, and the senate. This book is as much memoir as an engaging course in modern history and political science. Most people would espouse their law or graduate degree’s alma mater, in his case the University of Kentucky. His passion remained for his undergraduate college where he earned a B.A. in history at the University of Louisville. This is important because he readily and clearly details many historic events and the government’s role in a way that’s both appealing and instructive.

He outlines details of the Electoral College, why it makes sense, and how keeping the minority voice relevant preserves the stability of the government. He works to clarify why many events happened based on his views of the balance of power.

Steve Jobs had a line about looking in the mirror in his Stanford commencement address about when he didn’t like what he saw, he changed. McConnell grants he would take on work as attorney when he needed a job, but he refused to look in that mirror for too many months without change moving back to politics. In an era with a rapid rise and fall of celebrity, it’s interesting to read about his persistence. He started at the back in the most junior position (well, second to last at number 99) and worked his way to the front as majority leader of the senate. The Long Game might just have easily been named “The Long Wait.” I don’t mean this in the pejoritive rather that he did take so long to get to his current position as majority leader. I wanted him to succeed as the book progressed because I got to know his family, his two great health hurdles, childhood polio and a triple-bypass. I will add the caveat that I haven’t read The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell, and so I don’t villify him as many do in the reviews. I feel that if the people of Kentucky re-elected him six times to the senate in such varied eras, his story is worth a listen.

My criticisms come from the points-of-view he expresses are often one-sided. He backs his respect or disrespect of someone else or their choices. That he speaks for eight-and-a-half hours with his own voice demonstrates his willingness to take ownership for his words. He writes early that he will protect his own family, omitting his daughters from the narrative. But, he takes unnecessary shots at Al Gore with a Tonya Harding analogy and cardboard box personality line maybe forgetting Al Gore has kids too. He promotes that leaders should not badmouth others, advice he got from his mother, and continues to do the same. He lauds his own staff’s hard work, tells their stories and that of many republicans, but also Vice President Joe Biden’s role as a go-between with President Obama.

The book is thorough without being laborious spending about two hours on his childhood and life’s lessons that formed the foundation for many of his political descisions. The next four hours interlace the inner workings of the senatorial election process, the senate, rise and fall of the Republican majority, then on to Obama and the more recent political happenings. There is an “I told you so” sense that he knew this how events would play out. But, with as long as he’s been in office he may just have known. It’s certainly better way of learning about politics than reading a textbook. Many listeners passionate for history and political details will enjoy the listen. In all, with how little time one could get with a senator with his responsibilities, I enjoyed listening to what he had to say.

Narrator Review:

While the senator read his own book with a well paced pleasant Southern accent and pace, often one asks, “Was this a good decision?” In Arnold Schwarzennegger’s memoir Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, we hear Arnold in the beginning talking about his parents and childhood, then narrator Stephen Lang throughout the book, and back to Arnold at the end where he outlines his life lessons. But Arnold is publicly famous and became politically important. Mitch McConnell is politically important, but not celebrity famous. I think having a narrator would have diminished the impact of the book as a tool. As someone who has been public speaking for so long, he did a good job with the pacing. You really hear his emotion, even relief, in last chapters of the book, something that might not have come from a professional voice artist.

Audiobook was provided for review by the publisher.… (more)