McConnell has been superb as a Minority Leader. The only people who really disagree about that are those who always think Republicans will win another government shutdown, but that's a question for another day. As Majority Leader, McConnell has been less successful, but the simple fact is, the Republican caucus has never been close enough to 60 to have a realistic hope of breaking a filibuster without major compromises. The choice always reduces to doing nothing vs. settling for (hopefully) half a loaf.
There is an obvious partisan asymmetry here. If you look at the major milestones of the leftist deconstruction of America, the huge steps were taken when Democrats held supermajorities in both the House and Senate. This was true during the early New Deal; following JFK's assassination and the 1964 landslide, which led to LBJ and the Great Society Congresses; in the post-Watergate Congresses (1975-80), when the movement left took over the Democratic Party; and in the first two years of the Obama period.
Just as a thought experiment, take away the Democratic supermajorities, and most of the Democrat landmarks of the last 80 years would never have happened.
Republicans have not held a supermajority in either chamber in our lifetimes. The idea that a Republican Speaker or Majority Leader can somehow conjure the missing votes out of thin air has become a party-splintering fantasy. When Republicans do have a majority in the Senate, it has generally been very narrow. Look at the current Democratic lineup and find me eight Democrats who might plausibly defect on a big issue. They ain't there. A Republican Majority Leader is usually struggling to keep a half-dozen RINO's on board just to get to 51 votes. Democrats routinely have larger majorities. The problem is numbers.
I hope you will explain that body of thought widely on FR.
McConnell and Ryan did a superb job stopping the Obama agenda in 2015-16. It was precisely b/c Obama couldn’t get his agenda enacted by law that he had to go to the illegal Executive Orders. And the courts are slow as a check; suing the president is a laborious process, but amazingly the GOP came out well - including the the courts halting the Obama Immigration EOs.
In my own view, the greatest success of 2015-16 was that, with GOP majorities in both houses, the Obamacare risk corridor slush fund was eliminated, which was pivotal in dismantling Obamacare. And the Left was powerless to stop its funding from drying up, b/c the GOP controlled the budget process. Too few people credit this critical GOP accomplishment. And Rubio was the key player.