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Is Mike Pence a Decent Man?
Paul Meringoff, posting at Powerline, discusses former Vice President Mike Pence’s positioning for a presidential run in 2024.
The Washington Post reports that Mike Pence and his allies are gearing up for a possible run at the presidency in 2024. According to the Post, Pence’s friends and advisers say he’s likely to run for president, especially if Donald Trump doesn’t.
But even if President Trump doesn’t run in 2024, as Mirengoff notes —
One potential problem for Pence is that he refused, in his Senate role, to do Trump’s bidding when it came to blocking Joe Biden from becoming president. Some of Trump’s most ardent supporters consider Pence a turncoat because of that refusal.
Pence calls January 6 “a dark day at the Capitol” and says his focus is “entirely on the future.” This stands is contrast to Trump, who in his various interviews seems focused largely on the past.
In my view, Pence’s actions on January 6 count in his favor.
This last sentence is where I disagree with Mirengoff. I do not count Pence’s behavior in his favor. Pence was instrumental in General Flynn’s outster in the early days of the Administration. As subsequent events have proved, Flynn was successfully targeted by the Obama Administration and the Deep State (but I repeat myself). Pence was presumably unwitting in whatever role he played. It is still unclear to me what Flynn did to lose Pence’s confidence. Whatever it was, in hindsight it was no doubt manipulated by other actors.
Watching Pence left me with the impression that he was a decent man. His calm and measured demeanor was always a welcome counterpoint to a more dramatic President Trump. In Pence’s public comments before the 2020 election he always seemed to support President Trump’s policies. But what did he learn from watching the Deep State’s operations against President Trump and his family? Did he see an injustice and seek to defeat it? Or did he see his long understanding of politics confirmed and commit himself to playing by traditional Republican rules that made “good guys” win just enough so that “bad guys” could win most of the time?
As Mirengoff also states —
The Post reports that Pence wants “credit for what he sees as the good of the Trump administration.” This raises the question of whether Pence influenced that administration and, if so, in what ways.
There’s no doubt that Pence influenced the administration. Trump entered office with very little knowledge of the Republican Party. Not all that long before, he had been a Democrat.
Pence, a Republican insider, was there to help guide Trump when it came to selecting key personnel like White House chief of staff and the Cabinet. Pence wasn’t responsible for all of these selections — Trump took advice from other sources, too. But Pence was probably the most influential, and it was thanks in part to him that Trump imported the GOP establishment into his administration.
In my view, and eventually in Trump’s, many of those thus imported were sub-optimal selections, to put it gently.
Mirengoff lays out a compelling case for Pence being duped far too often. Here I agree.
But I have titled the post “Is Mike Pence a Decent Man?” and it is to that question I return: A decent man would have seen by November 2020 the terrible distortions wrought by President Trump’s enemies. A decent man would have hungered for the fight. A decent man would have chosen a way to get the constitutional outcome without accepting the irregularities as normal. Had Pence done what he so often did on Trump’s policies — articulating in a calm and clear manner what the problem was and how the solution was important — he would have done the nation a great service. Instead, he slipped back into a comfortable Republican role of amiable loser, vowing to fight another day.
If you are a political operative, it is the smart move because your assumption is that the game goes on indefinitely and giving the other side the opportunity to make a hash of it only improves your chances next time around. But the Progressives are not playing around. They.don’t.want.a.next.time. And Pence’s failure to help articulate and implement a strategy that would have resulted in confidence in the presidential election rather than assuming “fraud in an acceptable range”, makes him as culpable as the Progressives for what is happening now.
If you don’t believe me, maybe you can credit John Stuart Mill with some insight —
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.
We can substitute “decent” for “good” in the quote above. So, no, Mike Pence is not a decent man. Change my mind.
Published in General
I wouldn’t vote for Pence. Period. Always thought he was a bad choice who brought nothing to the table. Another corporate GOP member. The Flynn thing was emblematic. But also I have no problem with what he did January 6th.
In his personal life I think he is a very decent man. As a politician he his a political operative. He also has no political backbone. As Governor he caved to the GloboHomo lobby.
Paul is the Bill Kristol of Powerline. Read the comments to his post’s. It’s like the comments to Gary’s post’s here. They uniformly disagree with him.
Pence doesn’t have a snowball’s chance to get the nomination. Read the comments to Paul’s post. Almost 100 % thumbs down. This is Jeb territory.
Nary a question or concern about the unconstitutional way the 2020 election was handled in Pennsylvania or the myriad other anomalies that occurred or the thousands of ballots that materialized without any chain of custody was expressed by Mike Pence. He is the quintessential “go-along to get-along” gutless Republican. One doesn’t fight rabid socialists hell-bent on destroying this nation with such a mild-mannered, weak personality. I have never once seen the man tear into an opponent or raise his voice. My preference would first be for DeSantis, and then for Trump. I can think of no other Republican who has the guts to take on the leftist media, the socialists in Congress, or the lawless mobs.
Please just fade away, Mike Pence. Enjoy your pension and leave the battle to men with courage and tenacity.
Wow.
Great article. For me, you get to the heart of the matter.
The Ruthless Podcast had him on last week. Holmes used to work for Senator McConnell and I don’t know Smug’s background. Pence has started some think tank in D.C. and I thought, that’s just what we need.
Holmes talks like the guy you mention who thinks we trade turns. He’s all excited about the Republican’s chances next year.
I’ve always liked Pence. I think he’s a decent man. Unfortunately, he’s a poor politician. Decency is not enough, and isn’t what’s needed.
I mostly agree with your statement about Pence being a political operative. He’s an extremely smart and good at looking at how the winds will change. He is willing to dabble with the evangelical right and can speak their language but he is going to go with the broader establishment. We already did the “Pence for President” talk and as you write, he pulled the Indiana RFRA over some silly but withering criticism. Between people who hate anyone who worked with Trump and between the same people who saw Pence as a sellout he won’t be president though I think he’d probably do a decent job.
That was a great interview. And I’ll say it– I’m in love with the Ruthless podcast. I’m mixed on the right and another think tank. We have enough think tanks. We have enough ways for people to trade papers among themselves. Unless it is going to be something like an ALEC or an NRA-ILA that will help Republicans craft model legislation we don’t need another think tank. Unfortunately I think Pence just wants to jump into the Turning Points/YAF space. Its a way to get speaking fees and get a podcast. He isn’t going to be president and he knows it.
Yes. Pence is a dignified, affable loser.
I have not seen anything to cause me to think the Pence is not a decent man. I just don’t think he’s the man the country needs right now, or in 2024.
Is Donald Trump a decent man? Is he more decent than Pence? Is that the question we use to judge candidates? Maybe it should be…
Pence is the Kristi Noem of white guys. He probably would be a good neighbor, but he might just sue you because your mailbox is the wrong shade of taupe.
America has an enemy, the ideology of Progressivism (or whatever one of the infinite number of shifting, deceptive names they give to the single ideology of
totalitarianism) which has gained extensive control of essentially all of the institutions which allow the American idea to survive and prosper in practice. We have not made war on them. They have made war, a war of annihilation, on our beliefs and therefore on us. They will never stop this war until either…
Our idea (or our nation, depending on how you look at the world) needs a Washington, a Grant, a Lincoln, a Sherman, a Churchill, a leader who has the will and the ability to destroy their ability or their will to continue to fight.
Some of you have heard that I think there are two different ways of thinking about a problem, both equally necessary, but only one being more important to our cause in a given situation.
My methodology of thinking I called “P1”, and the other, “P2”.
We urgently need a great P2 to lead us, or we P1’s will soon be dead, and of no use to the cause of righteousness, truth, and Life.
A decent man will respect his oath of office, viz.
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
A decent man will understand his role as President of the Senate is to abide the 12t Amendment, i.e.,
The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;-The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;-The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President …
Everyone here may now feel free to manifest their own decency by hurling epithets and questioning my character.
This reminds me of one time when Trump and Pence were on the covid dais in front of the cameras and Trump answered a question in a sparse but up-beat way, and Pence wanted to speak, and spoke for 3 to 4 minutes (or 5 minutes) in that plain blank droning voice of his, and when he finished and stepped away for the podium, Trump smiled really big at him and, shaking his head, said, “You just spoke for five minutes and didn’t say a thing.” And he was right.
Now, THAT’S funny.
I had to ask my political consultant what I think of the content. She had to think a little, and she concluded, ‘no, we don’t agree’.
If you would like to debate the substance of this debate, give me your response and I will pass it on.
But I still think it’s a brilliant comment, and it must be mostly true or she would not have had to think so long.
The VP’s role is ministerial. That’s clear. Otherwise, what would stop him from refusing to certify the electoral votes from a given state because in his opinion the election in that state was filled with misinformation? Where does it end? The abuses in Pennsylvania were real, but the VP isn’t the one to correct that.
Jack-three passes.
And don’t forget, e-mails and a Pence/ Ryan website (if they are real) on-line this year, purp0rt to show that Pence was actively setting up and coordinating an alternative Republican ticket in 2016, while he was campaigning for VP with Trump. The story was that Pence believed that Trump would for some reason drop out.
And THEN Ryan refused to pass any 0bamacare repeal bill now that Trump would have signed it.
Strange politicking. Strange alliances.
My view is that Pence’s failure was between Election Day in November and Jan 6th, not necessarily what he did on that day in January. He had an opportunity to set a tone that supported President Trump during this two month period as @brianwatt pointed out in Comment #3. Instead, his silence on the pertinent election acts that were unconstitutional and possibly criminal can be compared to giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I can envision a scenario of actions and statements during this period by the Vice-President that could have shifted momentum surrounding the opposing forces and possibly changed the final outcome. I think we should be going for a 2024 nominee who we know would not have stood by silently and calmly during the period in question and would have sought a different result on Jan 6th.
Before the election, a friend told me that she had a friend in Indiana politics who told her that “Everyone Hated Pence! And you know if politicians hate you you’ve got to be bad!”
I figured that if he was hated by evil politicians, that’s because he wasn’t one of them, he was a good guy. But nowadays I’m not so sure she mightn’t be right.
And yet, Pence was also not simply a mute, wind-up monkey toy. He has a voice. He presumably has a conscience. There was absolutely nothing prohibiting Pence from raising his concerns about the many un-investigated allegations from sworn affidavits and numerous un-investigated anomalies of the election even before he was called to the Hill to preside as the Constitutionally trained monkey to open envelopes. Yet, he said nothing. Like several other know-it-alls who claim to this day that there was no chance the election was stolen even a day or two after the election when many of the questions were raised, Pence was satisfied that it was on the up and up. Gutless. Cowardly. Timid. May he be shouted down and booed off every stage he attempts to take.
This.
Pence is a good man, but not a strong candidate.
He was chosen to appeal to a wing of the Republican but won’t inspire the rest of the bird.
And there are people on the left who think he is theocratically inclined and will fight hard against him.
He’s not going to get swing voters like Trump did.
That said, if he gets the Republican nomination, I will vote for him because he’s our people.
That wing of the bird is the de facto ally of the Progressives.
This is not the time for the irenic, no matter how well groomed, well, dressed, and well behaved.
The following is a dangerous thought until it becomes a necessary one:
That said, we should not lose sight of the fact that the USA lost that war. Stalin won it, and did so with the willing collaboration of many Americans and the unwitting collaboration of many more. Jakub Grygiel wrote the following for Law and Liberty in a review of Sean McMeekin’s Stalin’s War:
That tyranny was indeed lasting and pervasive; its offshoot is the ideology of the Party that holds the White House, the US Senate and the House of Representatives, and whose allies control the state aligned media and the educational establishment.
This has always been my view as well. I think that knowing it is a prerequisite of knowing anything else that’s important about the current struggle between the people and the elite for command of the country.
So, it bothers me that I so rarely read it from anyone else, and it is comforting when I do.
McMeekin’s book is getting some traction, so more of us may come out from under cover. While I had been hoping for an intellectually interesting old, age and it is indeed comforting to find someone else who thinks the same, the implications of that thinking in the light of current events are not at all comforting. Things may get entire too interesting. Soon.
Actually, I’ll challenge the premise.
A decent man is never a street fighter, willing to get dirty if it means winning. Pence is a gentleman, but he is no leader, and certainly no street fighter.
We are too far gone to survive another Bush in the White House.
I will make an over-simplified statement and hopefully return to talk about such things in a day or two (or three or four) that I feel should always be at the core of such discussions.
The goal is liberty; the enemy is tyranny.
Sure, it gets more complicated after that – but you should always return to that core truth. The love of one and the intolerance the other should not be left out of any consideration, and might be given more weight than manners.
The deep state had the goods on him and he caved.
You should read McMeekin’s other books as well. He explains how Lenin raped and looted Russia in great detail. He explains the break up of the Ottoman Empire.
I don’t agree that Stalin was the main victor of World War II, however. The US has been with the global institutions we have built, but that is being rapidly frittered away in the wake of the so-called global war on terrorism as a distraction from the rise of China, which is capturing those institutions.