The Price of Power

How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America and Lost His Party

By: Michael Tackett

Narrated by: Fred Sanders

The first definitive biography of Mitch McConnell, revealing an intimate look at the personal and political life of one of the most powerful senators in American history.

In the long history of American government, few senators have wielded as much power as Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell. That’s no accident; he worked his entire life to cultivate his dominance.

In The Price of Power, award-winning journalist Michael Tackett pulls back the curtain on one of the most influential figures to ever set foot in the American Senate, offering you an intimate, personal view of his life and career. Drawing on thousands of pages of archival materials, letters, and more than 100 interviews with associates, colleagues, and McConnell himself, Tackett pieces together the story of McConnell’s early life, his formative battle with polio as a young child, and details his forty-plus-year career as one of the Senate’s most impactful leaders.

A lifelong Republican, McConnell was known as a pragmatic moderate legislator when he joined the Senate in 1985. Tackett traces his steady rightward drift, as McConnell’s politics evolved with his masterful ability to consolidate and wield power. But such success comes at a cost. The Trump years brought with them the rise of an almost unrecognizable Republican party, suffused with a reactive populism that even McConnell himself would struggle to control.

Featuring expert reporting, unprecedented access, and never-before-published revelations, The Price of Power is an inside portrait of exactly that—what it takes to achieve power, maintain it, deploy it, and, finally, watch it slip out of your hands

©2024 Michael Tackett (P)2024 Simon & Schuster Audio

Insight into Mitch McConnell and the Senate

Wonderfully descriptive phrasing describing McConnell and the processes that and participants that help run the country. This is a must read for anyone interested in politics, government and the dynamics that influence human behavior.

McConnell IS the problem in Washington

Wow! I didn't know much about McConnell before listening to this book; but, I now see McConnell's overwhelming obsession for power from an early age. That obsession for power has had an absolutely disastrous result for OUR country!! McConnell is exactly the same as Trump--obsessed with power. Say one thing, do the opposite when it benefits you. Delay, delay, delay; then destroy. Absolute unwillingness to negotiate with the other side, creating the "all or nothing" method that each party now lives by. McConnell was on the cutting edge of this disaster, and he's PROUD of it! He has done everything possible to legally steal POWER FOR HIMSELF--just like Trump!! But frankly, McConnell has gravely hurt our country more than Trump ever will. For the most part, Trump's damage is transitory and can be adjusted later. McConnell's damage by basically eliminating negotiating to create laws and policy in the desire for PERSONALLY winning, all for his own personal gratification for power, is lasting decades already; and, it appears it will last for generations if we are even able to ever return to ACTUAL GOVERNING FOR EVERYONE. A weak child who craved to be strong and important, grew into a man with no personality and every relationship is transactional--even his "romantic" and personal relationships with women he dated solely to increase his positioning for POWER!! What a shame that one conniving man could do so much damage to an entire country simply to satisfy his personal need for power! McConnell is the perfect reason why there should be term-limits!

WOW

Disgusting to learn McConnell is so politically driven and self centered. His way or no way.

Well sourced and fascinating. Humanizes without overselling it.

Heard about this book on MSNBC and dowloaded it that morning. I read to better understand him and now I do.

I already knew most of the story from the news

it had very good narration. I have nothing more to say why fifteen word minimum?

Nothing Really New

The book was ok. Nothing really new. Narration was mediocre and contributed to it being boring.

Sanitization of Mitch’s Most Influential Years

I admittedly read this book to obtain a detailed unbiased take on the life and legacy of Mitch McConnell. What I instead found was mostly bluster, nice talk, and sanitization of easily one of the most powerful political figures in American history, whose actions have brought our nation further from democracy, than nearly any other political actor. For example, his role in galvanizing his party as the opposition and anti policy party has cost the American public dearly. But don’t take my word for it, this is publicly available information. There is data (financial data, voting records, his personal net-worth, fact-checking data). How dare a Cold War politician allow for his party to make the overtures to Russia that it has. How dare Polo Survivor allow his party to embrace antiscience anti-vaccine stances. The moral gymnastics he’s had to do in his lifetime is enough to make the East Coast dizzy and regretfully this biography lacks any insight that can’t be gained from his Wikipedia page.