Mike Pence gave a speech attacking populism, and the reaction should echo that of the journalist at the 1964 Republican convention listening to Barry Goldwater’s acceptance speech: “My God, he’s going to run as Mike Pence.”
Former vice president Pence is an admirable man and committed conservative who would make a good president. His speech was sincere, and even courageous in the current Republican context, but failed to quite bell the cat.
The basic problem is that it’s hard to define populism. Is it an emotive, anti-elitist mode of politics or a set of substantive beliefs? It can be both. Another complicating factor is that it can be difficult to disentangle it from conservatism.
Pence said the party has to choose either conservatism or populism. But this isn’t true. Prior to the rise of Donald Trump, successful Republican presidential candidates had integrated populism into their political appeal for decades, from Richard Nixon, to Ronald Reagan, to George W. Bush. Populist-flavored conservatism can be a powerful mix; the more one replaces the conservatism with the populism, the worse it gets. On specific issues, is it conservative or populist to disdain the elites who run our system of higher education, to oppose the rule of experts we saw during the pandemic, or to want the border brought under control? Mistrust of undeserved elitism, blinkered expertise, and social control are good; mistrust of actual knowledge, experience, character, and talent are bad.
Obviously an impetus of Pence’s speech was to warn against another Donald Trump nomination. There’s no doubt that Trump is a populist, but there’s nothing inherently populist about, say, his appalling conduct after the 2020 election, which had to do with his character flaws, not any political ideology. Indeed, there are high-profile populists who have turned their backs on Trump and gone with Ron DeSantis exactly because of the former president’s terrible judgment and flagrant irresponsibility. (Our own Michael Brendan Dougherty is an example.)
Pence’s speech would have avoided such analytical problems if it had been a frank attack on Trump and his epigone Vivek Ramaswamy rather than on populism as such.
That said, there’s currently a strong impulse in the party, largely associated with the GOP’s populists, to disdain markets, to use government power to try to achieve favored ends, to diminish the U.S. leadership role around the world, and to blithely accept elevated budget deficits and ever-expanding government debt. There are also too many in the party who drift with the current even when they know better.
The former vice president is right to call this out. The party could do worse than be led by someone with the character and convictions of Mike Pence, and probably will.