We Knew Henry Clay: Henry Clay Was a Senator of Ours, and You, Mitch McConnell, Are No Henry Clay

Via Jake, a long-lost painting of the great U.S. Senator and Speaker of the House from Kentucky Henry Clay has been restored and hung in a place of honor in the U.S. Capitol.

Unfortunately, the usually impeccable Smithsonian Magazine falls victim to Villager cowardice and allows Mitch McConnell to get away with implying today's scorched-earth repugs honor Clay's tactics of compromise.

What, one wonders, would Clay make of the heated exchanges that occur across the aisle in Congress today? "Our discourse pales with comparison to the early history of the country," says Senator Mitch McConnell, a lifelong admirer of his Kentucky predecessor. For 14 years, McConnell sat at Clay's Senate desk. (Kentucky's junior senator, Jim Bunning, currently occupies it.) "The compromises he wrought were life and death issues for the nation, at a time when not everyone was sure the nation would last. If you are going to be able to govern yourself, you have to learn to compromise. You can either get something, or get nothing; if you want to get something, you have to compromise."

Democratic "leader" Schumer is hardly better:

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York concurs. "Henry Clay's talent repeatedly drew us back from the brink of calamity," he says. "The hanging of Clay's painting couldn't come at a more symbolic time. I hope it will be a reminder to all of us in the Senate that bipartisan agreement can help push us toward becoming a more prosperous nation."

The Great Compromiser understood, as Doctor No and Mr. Slippery do not, that compromise is only a tool, and only one tool among many.

Senate repugs today are the direct descendants of John C. Calhoun's Nullifiers, willing to burn the nation to the ground in pursuit of political victory.

Senate Democrats today are taking their cue from the slavery apologists, eager to condemn the "peculiar institution" but refusing to do what was necessary to end it.

Not even the ghost of Clay himself threatening eternal damnation could persuade Senate repugs to reconsider mindless obstruction, but perhaps Democrats will take inspiration from the Clay portrait to emulate this side of the Great Compromiser:

Those who resisted efforts to achieve compromise, however, experienced Clay's wrath as "continuous peals of thunder, interrupted by repeated flashes of lightning."

Read the whole thing.