There's some kind of political-cultural desperation that I see far too often from far too many people associated with The Bulwark in the tone that Bulwark editor Jonathan V. Last's Atlantic piece in which he strives to make the case that Democrats ought to get enthused about the way Mike Pence has carried himself from January 6, 2021 onward.
Last just basically goes through what we all know that Pence did right that day, and, for good measure, he mentions Pence's February speech in which he says that Trump was wrong.
Weak tea.
At this point, I'll cede the floor to Ed Kilgore of New York magazine:
But didn’t Pence show great courage in defying Trump to begin with? Well, that’s less clear. It seems everyone he consulted while he wavered (and he clearly wavered), including former Republican vice-president Dan Quayleand greatly respected conservative legal scholar J. Michael Luttig, told him that of course he had no authority, constitutional or statutory, to do what Trump was asking. The only person telling Pence he did have the authority was Trump’s attorney John Eastman, whose specious arguments would have probably gotten him bounced from a basic constitutional-law course. Indeed, you have to ask yourself whether Eastman would have made this plea to anyone with less than Pence’s long record of intensely, almost religiously obsequious conduct toward Trump. So the veep’s own craven history led to the order he so bravely denied, which means he would come to any Presidential Medal of Freedom award with unclean hands.
It’s also relevant that Pence’s revolt against Trump was and remains extremely limited, as I noted when he got a lot of praise for tough talk about the “un-American” nature of Trump’s demands of him on January 6:
Pence has a strong natural interest in limiting congressional or media scrutiny to the isolated events of January 6. Did he ever disagree publicly or privately with the foundation for an election coup that Trump laid for months and months by attacking voting by mail and claiming his ticket could lose only if the election were rigged? Did he remonstrate with Trump when he claimed an immensely premature victory on Election Night? Did he dissent from the strategy of frantically asserted and entirely bogus fraud charges by the campaign bearing his own name as well as Trump’s? Did he object to the self-certification of victory by fake Trump-Pence electors in December 2020? Indeed, did Pence do anything to get in the way of the attempted theft of the election until Trump called on him to accomplish it in a clearly unconstitutional coup with the whole world watching?
If so, we haven’t heard about it.
Last’s underlying pitch is that Democrats should be trying harder to separate Republican voters who don’t accept Trump’s authoritarian ways from the GOP he still dominates. That makes sense. Is Pence their beau ideal? I certainly hope not since he never repudiated many of the terrible policies the Trump-Pence administration promoted. And as my colleague Ross Barkan recently argued, Pence may be a greater threat than Trump going forward, given his rich history of atavistic cultural and economic positions married to the Hoosier respectability that supposedly saved him and his country from perdition on January 6.
I'll add a personal sentiment here, although it's not actually so personal, since I didn't avail myself of the opportunity to witness the substantiation for my position first-hand.
I live in Columbus, Indiana, the hometown to which Pence returned on the late afternoon of January 20, 2021, after attending Joe Biden's inauguration. Standing on the tarmac of the Columbus Municipal Airport, with his wife Karen at his side, the first damn thing out of his mouth was his wish to thank Donald Trump for four years of service to the nation.
Seriously.
After the "Hang Mike Pence" chants. After the FBI agent's January 5 warning to Pence chief of staff Marc Short that the president would publicly turn on Pence the next day and pose a security risk to Pence.
I live about a mile and a half from the airport. I was sitting at my desk in my home office and it occurred to me in mid-afternoon that I could go over there and watch this "historic" event.
I took a pass, and my reason for doing so was quickly validated.
But let's go further back into the Trump era, and let's look at another Hooiser connection. Let's look at what Bob Woodward reports in his book Rage about a particular state dinner at which Marilyn Coates, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates's wife, gave Pence a most intense facial expression conveying the message, "how can you continue to be part of this?", and how Pence shot her back a look conveying the message, "You and Dan need to please stay the course.' (I'm paraphrasing here.)
Mike Pence is no hero. He's doing his best to straddle. Lord only knows why. His goose is cooked politically.
I guess none of us want posterity to have the chance at framing us as human beings who came up short when circumstances called upon us to do the hard but right thing.
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