In this week’s issue of “Issues in the Government,” Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, is creating gridlock and problems for President Obama. From the time Obama was elected as president, McConnell’s goal was to make him a one-term president. He made it his personal goal to make a president who had a 70 percent approval rate acquire more "L's" than "W's" on his record sheet.

This time, he is going out of his way to ignore the Constitution and go against one of the President’s most important powers; that is, to appoint a Supreme Court justice. The sad news of the death of Antonin Scalia created conversation around the country. Some talked about Scalia’s legacy since the Ford Administration, some talked about who Scalia was, and others discussed, what happens now? A Supreme Court justice is nominated and appointed by the president and serves for life. So, when a Supreme Court justice passes, what is to be done? Well, the president who is in office appoints a new justice. “[The President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint… Judges of the Supreme Court.”

So, there should not be an issue, correct? Wrong. The Senate has to approve the Supreme Court Justice nomination, which we saw with the nomination and narrow approval of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas in October of 1991, under the Bush Administration. This is a motivator to be less autocratic and more democratic, which is a good thing. But McConnell is not letting this happen. To create headlines and put his name and face out in front, McConnell is not allowing the president to nominate because he will not allow a replacement vote in the Senate. His reason is that “This vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” Not letting the president complete his presidential duty definitely seems like the right thing to do, McConnell.

McConnell is not new to creating spotlights for himself and making sure things work for him and his supporters. By barely winning the Senate seat in Kentucky in 1984, he saw that being close to Ronald Regan was a way to get him to higher leadership positions. As his career continued, he dealt with issues like the minimum wage, troops in Iraq, and immigration solely to use them for reelection purposes. Seeing that immigration reform weakened the party support, he split up the bill, deciding that Congress would vote on the immigration reform in separate pieces. The New York Times stated that “It meant ducking out of the intense debate on the Senate floor about immigration reform to avoid making himself vulnerable on the issue.” Whatever would garner support for his re-election and his party, he made sure happened. For McConnell, it seems that, as The New York Times reported, “It is less about blocking liberal policy goals than about boosting Republican chances.” McConnell’s number one priority was to see Obama fail in his first term, and he explicitly stated during Obama’s election that, “We have a new president with an approval rating in the 70 percent area. We do not take him on frontally. We find issues where we can win, and we begin to take him down, one issue at a time. We create an inventory of losses, so it’s Obama lost on this, Obama lost on that. And we wait for the time where the image has been damaged to the point where we can take him on.” Maybe this could make some of you rethink the common phrase “Thanks, Obama” and understand the reasoning behind it.

This issue now is the appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice. McConnell does not want this to happen, and Obama wants to fill a seat, which is simply doing what the President has the power to do. Knowing that this will get his name in newspapers and on the news, there is no way that McConnell will back down. His reasoning behind waiting until a new president is elected is absurd. Obama has more than seven months left in office. A vacant seat in the highest court in the land (besides the basketball court above the United States Supreme Court) for seven months will do signifcant damage to the court system. McConnell, put down your stubbornness and succumb to the Constitutional laws that built this country, the laws that you swore to obey and abide by when you assumed your position. No one likes that kid in the store that whines and cries because their parents did not give them what they wanted… just saying.