DID DONALD EVEN EXIST?:

On the policy frontier, where voters' lives are shaped and institutions are remodeled, others were in charge. Those people most likely regarded Trump as a useful foil, someone easy to manipulate or outmaneuver if you had the stomach and patience for it. There are myriad examples, but for now let's focus on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Attorney General William Barr and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

Each of those men embodies some traits needed to turn Trump into a sock puppet -- or to simply keep him out of the way. They could be wily (McConnell, Barr, Powell), craven (McConnell, Barr) or courageous (Powell), but needed at least one of those attributes to achieve their goals. History will also probably judge each of them in proportion to how much their particular vices or virtues drove policy and procedure.

"At the risk of tooting my own horn, look at the majority leaders since L.B.J. and find another one who was able to do something as consequential as this," McConnell, a history buff, told the New York Times after he rammed Justice Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court in October.

McConnell regards his conservative reshaping of the federal judiciary as his signature accomplishment, and his legacy goes well beyond the Supreme Court. He has pressed the Senate to confirm at least 229 federal court appointments during Trump's presidency, and, for the first time in 40 years, hasn't left a left a single vacancy on district and circuit courts -- even if that has meant repopulating the judiciary with young, white men bearing threadbare resumes.

Trump didn't have a sophisticated, informed view of the judiciary before becoming president. But he let McConnell transform such traditionally liberal venues as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals because the senator sustained him in other ways. McConnell ran interference when Trump was impeached. He helped court Trump's incendiary political base. He kept to the shadows when Trump attacked the Black Lives Matter movement. He remained silent when Trump savaged the integrity of the presidential election.

McConnell, according to those close to him, held Trump in low regard but protected him anyway to feed his own political ambitions, further fuel his fundraising apparatus and go about dismantling the federal government. McConnell's fealty and machinations came home to roost this year when Trump failed to effectively respond to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Senate was left so broken it appears unable to pass a second coronavirus relief package even though it has bipartisan support.

It's not clear yet whether McConnell, content to wield power for power's sake alone, will pay any penalties for cuddling with Trump. But there's no question that he has spun the president like a top the last several years whenever one of his own goals was in play.

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