Mike Pence Is a Hero

The political environment we have today is extremely polarized. There are two sides, the good guys and the bad guys. Everything your side does good is to be celebrated, lauded, and used as justification for the next time your side does something stupid. Anything the other side does bad instantly brands them as the enemies of America, cold-hearted villains out to destroy anything and everything you hold dear. Anything they do good -- anything that marks them as an actual person, with actual good intentions -- is to be swept under the rug, ignored, or manipulated to support your own side. Everything your side does bad (μη γενοιτο) probably doesn't exist, is explainable in full context, and really doesn't matter all that much. It's an incredible image of group-think: if you aren't for us, you are against us.

And it is very easy to merely go along with the flow. It takes relatively no courage to agree or support what your side says, or to merely remain silent if your side does something you believe is wrong. If you speak out, you are alone. Your side immediately rejects you for any disagreement with their agenda, and the other side (while they will likely weaponize your dissent) is still the other side.

That is why we should take note when this happens; when a man or woman stands up against their own side, putting their careers and reputations at risk. I am not talking about someone switching sides, leaving one side but joining the other. No, this is when someone stands up against their own side, when the entire force of popular opinion is against them, and calls them out. For this means that they are standing up for some deeper reason than just political gain, or acclamation. It is for something more important than winning the news cycle, or the current political moment. And we should pay attention.

And that is what Mike Pence did in early January, when Trump was pressuring him to try to bend the Constitution and refuse to recognize the election results. Trump had been insisting that the election was stolen consistently for the two months since election day, and most of the GOP was behind him. Trump had convinced them that the Democrats were stealing the election, and that their only hope of remaining free was to resist the election results. But then Trump's efforts began falling through. He tried the judicial branch; lawsuits were getting kicked out of court. He tried the state level, calling Georgia's secretary of state and urging him to 'find 10,000 votes'; Raffensperger refused, to his credit. He tried the legislative level, urging senators to object to state results being recognized, but that wasn't going to work due to the Democratic majority in the House. And so the executive branch and his vice-president, Mike Pence, was probably his last legal shot, through a weird Constitutional argument that since the Vice-President presides over the vote-counting process, he is somehow able to reject all electoral votes that he doesn't like.

I note that making this argument on the eve of a Democratic administration taking office is one of the most short-sighted political moves in remembrance.

But, people were making it. Trump made it; he told the crowd outside the White House that they 'needed Mike Pence to come through for them.' Eleven GOP senators and over fifty representatives were prepared to object to the states' results.

And in that time, when all (or very many) who had formerly been on his side were pressuring him to do this, he refused. Pence held firm to his Constitutional and legal duty, explaining his reasoning in a clear, honest letter to Congress which you can read here. This decision was not made lightly, and he took heat for it. Trump (and others) accused him of cowardice, ... and there was a mob chanting 'Hang Mike Pence' outside (and inside) the Capitol later that day. In response to which he reconvened the Senate and resumed the vote-counting process, after the insurrection had been quelled.

Not only that, but when, only days later, the House called on him to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office -- an easy way to get back at a president who had betrayed him so viciously -- Pence still stuck to his sworn Constitutional duty, explaining how this was not a proper use of the 25th in this letter here.

These were not easy things to do. At a time when almost everyone around him was pushing him to bow to the masses and do the wrong thing, Pence held firm to his Christian and conservative beliefs, setting an example that all of us should hope to follow.