Mike Pence and One Cheer For Doing the Right Thing
Let me just start with this: I don’t think former Vice President Mike Pence is a hero. He enabled President Trump and spent way too much time groveling to the former President. His legacy will be stained because of the choice he made.
That said I do want to give him one cheer, for doing the right thing when it counted.
Pence’s deep loyalty to Trump went overboard, but deep down there was something good there that became corrupted under the Donald: attention to duty. He showed duty to the constitution even as Trump tried to bully him with the obscene statement that he could down in history as a patriot or as a “pussy.” He showed duty to custom by going to the inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Harris. His former boss decided to skip the inauguration and leave town, giving himself a big send-off. He even got to leave on AirForce One since Biden wasn’t yet president. For Trump, everything was about him and he was willing to weaken our republic just so he didn’t have to face being a loser.
I know many will say, “He was just doing the job he was supposed to do. Big whoop.” I get that. And yet, for the last four years, we’ve had a leader that never really did his job. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is simply show up, doing your duty-even when it’s hard.
By being at the Inauguration instead of the outgoing President’s “yea me!’ rally, Mike Pence was tipping his hand towards national unity. Trump was never the President of all of the United States. Instead, he was President of Red America. That’s why he couldn’t show up at the Inauguration; going to the winner of the election meant acceding to the enemy: Blue America. One of the reasons I find Presidential Inaugurations thrilling is because for a short period of time, people of different parties and persuasions can come together as Americans. The outgoing President welcomes the incoming President. The outgoing First Lady has tea with the incoming First Lady. Politicians from the opposite party wish the new President and Vice President all the best in leading the nation. Inaugurations remind us that this large and motley gathering of people is one nation, one people.
I’m currently in the middle of Divided We Fall, by David French. French, who is an editor for the Dispatch writes about how the current fissures in America could very well boil over with worldwide implications. How? The book’s subtitle tells you: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. French presents two scenarios “Calexit” and “Texit” where an event or crisis sets off a cascade that leads to the breakup of the United States. I just finished Calexit and am in the middle of Texit. Both scenarios are sobering, all the more so after the Insurrection of January 6. As a review of the book shows, we are closer to secession than you think.
Today has been a historic day as we saw a woman of color become Vice President. I watched Vice President Kamala Harris take the oath of office from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and I clapped for joy as the oath concluded. We might have differences of policy, but just like with President Obama twelve years ago, this was a great moment for America. Even with all of the problems we have as a nation, that event reminds us that America is always becoming, striving to live up to those words in the Declaration of Independence.
But even with that momentous event, even with the excitement of having a new President, something else happened after the ceremony that was more important. On the steps of the East side of the Capitol where only two weeks prior a riotous mob stormed the building, Mike and Karen Pence chatted with Kamala Harris and the new Second Gentlemen Doug Emhoff. The two couples said their goodbyes and then the Pences got into a Suburban. The Second couple waved the former second couple off as they left the Capitol.
I needed to see that image. We needed to see that image. President Trump made his presidency off contempt and hatred. Everything was about conservatives and progressives hating each other. The new Vice President and the former Vice President chatting and saying goodbye with a sense of civility and respect is a reminder that maybe there is still hope for America. Maybe we can learn to disagree without seeing each other as the enemy. Maybe we can move forward together, not in a bland unity, but united.
That’s why I give one cheer to Mike Pence. By showing up he helped us remember that America can be and must be e Pluribus Unum; Out of Many, One.
In 1995, the world of baseball had its eyes on Cal Ripken. Throughout that summer he was edging closer and closer to a record number of consecutive games played. On September 6, 1995, he broke a record held by Lou Gherig for over 50 years by playing 2,131 games. He kept the record going until September 19, 1998, playing a total of 2,632 games. I was living in Washington, DC at the time so the news of Ripken coming closer and closer to the record was everywhere. I also remember that some would wonder what was so important about showing up for work every day. Looking back, I kind of wondered that myself. But Ripken showed an attention to duty. He showed up. There are reasons when you can’t show up of course, but Ripken was willing to be there. Showing up never seems sexy, but it matters it matters a lot.
So, thanks for showing up Vice President Mike Pence. Because it made a difference.
I wonder if Pence’s loyalty is a double-edged sword for him. He has what I understand to be a fierce loyalty to his faith, which endears him to those who share it but often leads him to policy position that many find noxious. He has a sometimes mocked loyalty to his wife and they seem to have a happy marriage with nary a whisper of problem, though how he approaches that loyalty may limit professional advancement opportunities for women in his orbit. He was fiercely loyal to his boss during much of their time together but then offered that same loyalty to the Constitution and many of our national institutions.
This could easily be called blind loyalty, which I don’t necessarily consider a good thing. But that is my perspective. It seems Pence does and, in many ways, it has served him well but also left him vulnerable to very legitimate criticism.Report
A million years ago, James Carville wrote a little book called Stickin’: The Case for Loyalty. I read it at the time (no idea where it is… maybe I got it from the library) and thought that the book made a handful of good points but could also have been read as an apologia for a handful of things that he knew would not age well in future current years.
In any case, “Stickin'” has a long tradition.
I think that the problem comes when you find yourself in a situation across the table from someone who you don’t know what they might be loyal to. Are they going to be loyal to their Faith today? Is today one of the loyal to the Constitution? Are they going to go with loyal to their tribe?
Good reasons to be loyal to any one of those in any given conflict, mind…
It’s just that when people start picking and choosing and you don’t know which one they’re going to be loyal to, it might be useful to see if they’ve got a setup where they’re loyal to themselves, first and foremost, and are really good at picking Faith when that’s the best personal option, the Constitution when that’s their best personal option, Society when that’s their best personal option, and so on and so forth down the line.
And a meta-loyalty of loyalty to oneself is a lot less praiseworthy.Report
Pence is done as a political animal. The Republican Party won’t nominate him for President even IF they get ride of Trumpism (and that will be a long time coming). He knows this. He won’t be governor or Senator or anything else. So that last bow to civility and duty was all he had left to give.Report
He was already done. In 2016 he was running for reelection as Governor of Indiana and trailing the Democrat in the polls. In Indiana! Back then lots of people made fun of him for accepting the spot as VP candidate. I said it was a low-odds high-reward gamble. And he came within one heart attack or stroke (in a 70+ overweight exercise-shunning man) of grabbing the big brass ring.Report
And yet somehow, I doubt he’ll have a hard time paying off his mortgages or putting food on the table.Report
As the only person who couldn’t be fired by Trump, a better man would have leveraged his position to greater advantage… either as an insider or an outsider frozen by the President. As such he delivered a Mike Pence 0 WAR performance… but as you say, to his credit he fulfilled the baseline of his duty to his office and by offset relief illustrated the full depravity of Trump.Report
I’m starting to wonder if any +1 or more WAR is even electable anymore. We’ve got our 0s/JAGS (and that’s ok, all championship teams have some of those) and a lot of negatives. But where’s a good +7 or +8 player?Report
Right, the reality is we’re governed primarily by 0’s pretending they are +’s … if the institutions are strong, rightly aligned, and pointed in the correct direction this is a recipe for … well … status quo.
We only really get +7 politicians maybe once every couple/few generations. They are the ones who build the movement, align the personnel, institutions and stakeholders with policies before they grab the brass ring.Report
And sometimes we get all eight men out.Report
WAR? JAGS?
Are these sports things?Report
Sportball terms for Wins-above-replacement and Just-another-guy … basically your average professional player at that position.Report
I understand. Thanks.Report
The intention of the Framers was a system that wouldn’t need top people.Report
I know, and I’m only being half serious. But for the on the line judgment calls I’d rather err on the side of higher expectations.Report
This is only half of his story. While he was being pressured by the executive branch to violate the role of the legislative, the legislative was doing the same thing. Speaker Pelosi was pressuring him to invoke the 25th Amendment without a Constitutional basis. At a moment of crisis, his loyalty was to the Constitution. This guy should receive a Profile in Courage Award.Report
On the 25th, I’ll push back gently… I think there’s a legitimate case to be considered.
I think that it is reasonable to suspect Trump was not mentally competent in the last couple of months. He was either pathologically lying or believed a lie pathologically. While the 25th may not have withstood a mid-term challenge, invoking it within the final 2-weeks given the erratic actions of the President seem perfectly constitutionally defensible.
Pence had to make a judgement call on that, and I’ll come clean that I think he prudentially made the wrong decision, but I disagree that it is defensible on Constitutional grounds… or, more precisely, that if he reasoned that he ‘couldn’t’ do what he thought he should do on constitutional grounds, then he reasoned incorrectly.Report
I don’t see his behaviour in the last two weeks or months of his term as being outside his usual. I think you need to be able to say that there was a change in his behaviour to make a 25th Amendment argument. Otherwise you have to say that he was never fit for office, but that estimation belongs in the hands of the Electoral College.
I sort of wrote that paragraph backwards to lay out my argument, but in time flow it goes like this: voters, then Electoral College, then Congress (for moral unfitness) or the Cabinet (for inability).Report
Air Force One did a great deal of harm to the country, in retrospect.Report
But the music, my God, the music!Report
I understand; we differ on the judgment Pence rendered… I’m pushing back on the idea that Pence was constitutionally bound not to exercise that judgment.
So, to your original point, one could (and you do) argue that Pence did not deem it 25th worthy at the moment… but I would not cite that as loyalty to the constitution, but a much lower standard of his judgement of whether to invoke the 25th.Report
Not sure if it’s ‘loyalty to the constitution’ exactly but it’s possible his judgment was based not on his interpretation of the 25th Amendment but avoiding a constitutional crisis. IIRC he was actually the one who called in the national guard on the 6th, not Trump. A certain analysis might say it’s better to stay within a blurry line of the authority to quell further violence than create a clear divide between him and POTUS, especially if it results in putting the ball in the court of the military.Report
You don’t see inciting a riot invented to overturn the election as being outside his usual? I admit, I don’t necessarily either, but that’s because I think his contempt for the rule of law was a danger to the republic the whole time.Report
Finish the thought: if his behaviour reflects the kind of thinking that got him elected, you can’t make an argument for the 25th Amendment.Report
No prez is just a reflection of what got them there. They create and feed the forces that led to their election. Trump was a shining example of that. The coup didn’t just happen out of nowhere. He was feeding that since the election and in other ways for his entire prez.Report
I don’t really see anything in the 25th amendment stating that. It says ‘unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office’. It doesn’t say he ‘becomes’ unable, just that he _is_ currently.
And there’s a few major problems in your interpretation.
For example, ‘kind of thinking’ and ‘unable’ are not the same thing.(1)
There were plenty of people who thought Trump would behave in one particularly bad way, and yet _didn’t_ believe he’d operate in a way that would literally risk the peaceful transfer of power, a duty uniquely in the president’s hands, and one he couldn’t have been tested on beforehand. (Actually, none of his abilities could have been tested beforehand.)
I.e., the thing he was about to impeached over was his failure to do a duty he literally had never faced before. What sort of dumb logic is it that ‘Well, he didn’t seem very good at all his other duties, either, which we knew about, so can’t remove him for his complete failure to do this last one.’?
Also, your logic completely ignores the fact that there are two entirely separate groups of people under consideration.
One group, the electoral college, gets to say whether he starts a presidential term.
The other group, the cabinet and the VP, get to judge his abilities, at every possible moment, during that term, and remove him if at any time they judge him unable to execute his duties….they could literally have judged him that way from the moment of their birth, and would have had the constitutional right to remove him immediately when given the power to do so. It doesn’t matter what _everyone else_ thinks, _they_ are the people in charge of deciding that. That’s how the Constitution works.
You have merged these two entities together in your logic. It doesn’t matter what ‘the nation’ decides about Trump’s fitness, what matters is what _the cabinet_ think.
1) This sort of BS is _constantly_ used as a defense of Trump, and it is, indeed, BS…new information and failures of Trump came out all the time, and the fact that _some_ people saw problems in advance doesn’t mean all people did.
This sort of nonsense ignores the fact that people _legitimately are aware of different information_, which is…a really damn weird thing not to know about human society. It also ignores the fact that things can be more, or less, proven, as time goes by.
This is utterly surreal as a defense. ‘We knew Trump _might_ have coordinated with Russia, and he got elected anyway, so the fact that he then ran around obstructing justice to keep that from being proven is not some new information and he cannot be punished for it’. ‘We knew Trump was the sort of person to extort people, so we can’t remove him for extorting the Ukraine’.
This is just nonsense. This is not how reality works. It’s blatant cognitive dissonance of ‘I can’t believe the person I supported was secretly X’, so everyone has to rewrite history in ‘We always knew he was X’.
No, _this side_ always knew he was X. The Democrats always did.
His voters, OTOH, have a fun history of constantly denying something, repeatedly denying it, until Trump just admits it was true, and then it becomes something that was ‘always known to be true’ and thus completely unimportant.Report
tl;dr for my footnote: The only time that ‘The voters already knew about a crime and thus it is not something we can consider in whether someone should be removed over that crime’ moral concept is either:
1) The person has either openly confessed to their actions, or the person has literally been convicted of the crime and doesn’t dispute their conviction, and also
2) This is generally known about them during the election. I’m not saying every voter has to know about it, but it has to be something easily discoverable.
That is the only case the ‘voters already know about this problem’ moral rule can be invoked under.
If voters didn’t know about it, or if there was any doubt sown by the candidate themselves, their defenders cannot say ‘The voters already knew about this’.
Literally everything ‘known about Trump’ fails under test #1. Everything ‘known’ about Trump’s crimes was disputed by Trump.Report
An animal might be always be capable of killing, but once it’s tasted human blood, it needs to be put down.Report