An overlooked story in the midterm elections is the retirement of three titans: , , and Steny Hoyer. Come January, the former Senate majority leader, House speaker, and House majority leader will leave the hallowed halls of Congress, and with them will pass a cadre that championed American global leadership, American values, and a sense of American forged destiny no longer prevalent in either the Democratic or Republican parties.
McConnell, Pelosi, and Hoyer entered Congress in the 1980s, and all lent their not-inconsiderable support — occasional bouts of partisanship notwithstanding — to the muscular anti-communism that was the hallmark of the Ronald Reagan era. Like most Republicans of the period, McConnell voted for robust military budgets designed to counter Soviet power, but Democrats Hoyer and Pelosi were no less enthusiastic in their anti-communism. Hoyer served as chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, and, in his own words, “supported much of the Reagan [defense] build-up.” Pelosi, an ardent critic of the Chinese Communist Party, advocated a harsh U.S. response to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and has supported Taiwan throughout her political career.
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