Mike Pence’s swearing- in will be another link to Reagan
No. 2 man looks to inspiration from the Great Communicator
Vice President- elect Mike Pence, unlike Donald Trump, won’t address the crowd after he’s sworn into office Friday.
Instead of a speech, Pence has two other ways to send a political message. He has chosen conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a man of few words on the bench, to administer the oath of office, and he will swear the oath with his hand on Ronald Reagan’s Bible.
Reagan is the politician who inspired Pence to leave the Democratic Party of his youth.
Pence made continuous references to Reagan throughout the campaign, including arguing that Trump has much in common with “the great communicator.”
And he told USA TODAY on Wednesday he finds himself drawn more and more to Reagan’s vice president, George H. W. Bush, as a role model for the job of No. 2.
“Because then, as now, there was a transformational leader,” he said. “It just informs me that the last administration that revived the country and literally changed the world is a good place for me to look for an example of a vice president who supports a president like that,” Pence said.
Raised in an Irish Catholic family, Pence’s early political heroes were the Kennedys. He was a youth coordinator for the Bartholomew County Democrats and voted for Jimmy Carter.
Pence doesn’t know what it was that later made him connect with Reagan.
“There was something about the man,” he said during a campaign speech he gave at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. “I don’t know if it was the fact that he was an unambiguous Irishman, his Midwestern roots, but he inspired me.”
Reagan biographer Craig Shirley isn’t surprised by Pence’s feeling of kinship with Reagan.
“The both came from the Midwest. They are both very firm conservatives in their conviction, but very gentle in their manner,” he said. “And they both got their start in radio.”
Reagan’s first job out of college was as a radio announcer in Iowa. Pence was a radio talk show host for much of the 1990s before his 2000 election to Congress.
When Pence became Trump’s running mate, one of his favorite campaign events was traveling to the Reagan Library to draw comparisons between Reagan and Trump.
The Reagan family Bible that Pence will use Friday was owned by his mother, Nelle.
Reagan used the Bible for his inaugurations as governor and president, with the book open to this underlined verse:
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” ( 2 Chronicles 7: 14)
Shirley said it was one of Nelle Reagan’s favorite verses. “That’s in part why Reagan chose that passage,” he said.
Pence, who describes himself as a “Christian, a conservative and a Republican — in that order,” closed many of his campaign speeches with those words.