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The Washington Free Beacon recently published presidential historian Tevi Troy’s excellent review of a new biography of Senator Mitch McConnell. The biography prompted Tevi to undertake an assessment of McConnell’s considerable contributions to the conservative cause. He does so without specifically mentioning McConnell’s successful efforts to prevent the confirmation of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.

One contribution that Tevi mentions in passing is McConnell’s skills as a talent scout. Here Tevi leads with Scott Jennings:

McConnell also differed from others in politics by having a thick skin. On this, Tackett quotes CNN’s Scott Jennings, one of multiple talented McConnell aides who, having learned from the master, went on to other prominent roles in the political world. According to Jennings, McConnell always kept his emotions in check: “I think people have never been able to understand his ability to divorce political decision-making from emotional overreaction. … He does not get bogged down in grudges, tweets, insults, haymakers. He just has this uncanny ability to remove negative emotions from strategic decision-making.”

The Jennings insight points to Tackett’s method. While this is not an “authorized” biography, in which the subject gets to approve the final text, McConnell did cooperate in opening up his own diaries and allowing his colleagues and former staff to speak to Tackett. In addition to Jennings, those ex-staffers include Josh Holmes, now of the Ruthless podcast, and Steven Law of the Senate Leadership Fund. These former staffers not only help provide insight into the McConnell method, but they also reveal McConnell’s skill in finding, assessing, and keeping top talent

Over the past year Jennings distinguished himself as the lone Republican contributor to multiple CNN political panels on which he performed with withering wit. He may have made CNN watchable, but I followed his viral clips on X that by themselves did nothing to add to CNN’s abysmal ratings.

Yesterday the Free Beacon honored Jennings as one of its 2024 Men of the Year. Some of the Free Beacon’s MOTY awards are facetious — the MOTY award bestowed on Jill Biden falls into that category — but this one plays it straight. The Free Beacon’s tribute is posted here. It comes with its own compilation of Jennings highlights in the video below.

Suffice it to say that Jennings took the award in the spirit intended.