VP Mike Pence models governing by groveling
George F. Will
Donald Trump knew. Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become America’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote GOP to ratify groveling as governing.
Last June, a Trump Cabinet meeting featured testimonials offered to Dear Leader by his colleagues. His chief of staff, Reince Priebus, caught the spirit of the worship service by thanking Trump for the “blessing” of being allowed to serve him. Priebus was soon deprived of his blessing, as was Tom Price. Before Price’s ecstasy of public service was truncated because of his incontinent enthusiasm for charter flights, he was the secretary of health and human services who at the Cabinet meeting said, “I can’t thank you enough for the privileges you’ve given me.”
Pence chimed in but saved his best riff for a December Cabinet meeting when, as The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake calculated, Pence praised Trump once every 12 seconds for three minutes: “I’m deeply humbled . ... ”
Between those two Cabinet meetings, Pence and his retinue flew to Indiana for the purpose of walking out of an Indianapolis Colts football game, thereby demonstrating that football players kneeling during the national anthem are intolerable to someone of Pence’s refined sense of right and wrong. Which brings us to his Arizona salute last week to Joe Arpaio, who was sheriff of Maricopa County until in 2016.
Noting that Arpaio was in his Tempe audience, Pence called Arpaio “another favorite,” professed himself “honored” by Arpaio’s presence, and praised him as “a tireless champion of ... the rule of law.” Arpaio, a grandstanding, camera-chasing bully and darling of the thuggish right, is also a criminal, convicted of contempt of court for ignoring a federal judge’s order to desist from illegal law enforcement practices. Pence’s performance occurred eight miles from the home of John McCain, who could teach Pence — or perhaps not — something about honor.
On Jan. 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln, then 28, delivered his first great speech, to the Young
Men’s Lyceum. Less than three months earlier, Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist newspaper editor in Alton, Illinois, was murdered by a pro-slavery mob. Without mentioning Lovejoy — it was unnecessary — Lincoln lamented that throughout America, “so lately famed for love of law and order,” there was a “mobocratic spirit” among “the vicious portion of (the) population.” So, “let reverence for the laws ... become the political religion of the nation.”
Pence, a favorite pin-up of evangelicals, genuflects at various altars, as the mobocratic spirit requires.
It is said that one cannot blame people who applaud Arpaio and support his rehabilitators because, well, globalization or health care costs or something. One must either blame them or condescend to them as lacking moral agency. Republicans silent about Pence have no such excuse.
Trump is what he is, a floundering, inarticulate jumble of gnawing insecurities and not-at-all compensating vanities, which is pathetic.
Pence is what he has chosen to be, which is horrifying.