The purpose of Mike Pence
Seth Mandel
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Mike Pence has the same long odds as much of the rest of the GOP presidential primary field. Yet one thing sets the former vice president apart from all the others: His candidacy has a point other than winning.
To be sure, consolidating the vote behind one not-Trump contender remains paramount, and if Pence ends up pulling difference-making votes away from, say, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) or even Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) (if the former keeps dropping and the latter catches the falling votes in an early state), it will not have been worth the price. For now, as Varad Mehta explained in the Washington Examiner magazine back in June, if DeSantis implodes, it won’t be Pence’s fault.
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Some presidential candidates have a reason to run but not a purpose. What drives them into the race is the reason for the candidacy; what the voting public gets out of the candidacy is its purpose. The difference is instructive in Pence’s case since he actually has both. Pence has a reason for running: explaining his own choices during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot so that former President Donald Trump isn’t the only one writing this draft of history in his own words. His widely (and justifiably) praised comments in Iowa this week are a good example. Asked (rather caustically) about his willingness to defy Trump and certify the 2020 presidential election, he explained the process, the law, and the Constitution clearly and calmly and then added this:
“There’s almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could pick the American president. The American presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone.”
Well said. So that’s his reason for running — but what about his purpose? The easiest way to explain that is to give an example of how Pence shows Republicans and conservatives how to communicate with each other in a way that could prevent a slide into irreparable factionalism.
Take the recent fracas over a Florida curriculum’s passage regarding slaves and the skills they sometimes developed in bondage that would help them either earn freedom or get a job once freed. Some reporters who didn’t do their homework tried to argue that it meant the curriculum was teaching children that slavery was net-beneficial to the enslaved. This was obviously not the case, but Democrats joined the chorus until it was revealed that the Advanced Placement college-level test course says the same thing and that it’s a common point made across curricula, not something a DeSantis administration cooked up. The civil rights leaders involved in crafting the curriculum quickly debunked the accusations.
But DeSantis is running for president and therefore has a target on his back. Former Republican congressman Will Hurd, who took a principled stand against the Trumpification of the party and retired from his House seat, gave a disappointingly bad faith response to the controversy: “Real leadership,” Hurd told NBC, “would have stepped up and said, ‘Hey, there is no upside to slavery. Slavery was not a jobs program.’ But this is one more part of a fact pattern of Ron DeSantis being mean and hateful.”
Hurd seems to have misinterpreted the reporting on the line itself. He also, bizarrely, apparently thinks DeSantis wrote the curriculum. It’s a mind-boggling line of attack when Hurd (who is black) simply could have focused his ire on the authors of the line or suggested that DeSantis step in here and edit the school lesson himself.
What would a good faith disagreement on this look like? Here’s Pence’s response: “Nothing good ever came from slavery. But I have a hard time believing that Florida intended to say anything other than that in their education standards. … I’d encourage the governor to take another look at it.”
I don’t know how much further Pence’s decency will get him, but it’s already gotten him pretty far in life. It can still be a benefit, however, to conservatives who watch his candidacy and want to learn how to debate and disagree without ripping the movement apart at the seams and further contributing to the rotting political discourse.