Good morning and happy Friday, Jolters. On the menu today: The January 6 hearings make the case for Mike Pence and the GOP’s celebrity-candidate problem.
Mike Pence Would Be a Great President
I don’t think Mike Pence will be the GOP’s nominee for president in 2024, and I don’t think he’s been perfect in his approach to politics or its major questions over the last six years. Still, the fact remains that he would be an excellent president of the United States.
What do you need to be an effective chief executive in this country? Well, you need to have some sort of articulable vision and worldview. Pence, as a rock-ribbed, Reaganite conservative with experience touting faith, family, and freedom on the stump and the speaking circuit, has that. Some may call it stale, but many of us still think it’s just about the hottest thing in town.
What else? You have to be a political talent. Pence may not be filling stadiums the way his old boss used to, but he’s unflappable and focused, and he can tap into just enough of the fiery radio host he once was when he needs to. Consider the ease with which he dispatched Tim Kaine and Kamala Harris — admittedly two of our age’s great mediocrities — in his two debate showdowns with them. Pence is surgical in his attacks, clearly explaining the absurdities and illogic of his opponents, all with a cheerful, happy-warrior presentation.
What else? Instincts — good ones. Say what you will about Pence’s decision to jump on the Trump ticket and serve as one of the most fiercely loyal vice presidents in American history, it turned him from a relatively anonymous governor into a national political force. Many might have been reticent to join Donald Trump in 2016, when it appeared he was heading for a loss to Hillary Clinton, but Pence joined the team and stayed the course. Even now, Pence is more than happy to cite his contributions to the Trump-Pence administration as his chief qualification to be at the head of a Pence administration. If he does have a shot at the top job, he’ll need to lean into that legacy, even as he distances himself from Trump the man.
What more does he need to prove that he could be commander in chief? To be frank, a spine. Pence is a mensch, self-evidently so. Oftentimes, that character trait seemed so discordant with his obsequious treatment of the decidedly un-mensch-like Trump that it left observers wondering how much of his own man he could be. Perhaps we didn’t need to hear so often about his boss’s “broad shoulders,” for example.
But Pence drew the line where he needed to, resisting Trump’s call to try to reject the legitimate Electoral College results in 2020. Under great pressure both public and private, he weathered the storm and did his duty, even though his political interests may have been better served by lending more credence to “stop the steal.”
Marc Short, formerly Pence’s chief of staff and Trump’s director of legislative affairs, testified to the January 6 Committee that Pence made his position clear “many times” and was “very consistent” in insisting he could not do as Trump asked. “The vice president really was not wavering in his commitment to what he — what his responsibility was,” said Short.
Greg Jacob, Pence’s chief counsel at the time, testified that “the vice president never budged from the position that I have described as his first instinct, which was that it just made no sense from everything that he knew and had studied about our Constitution that one person would have that kind of authority.”
And Pence never wavered in spite of Trump’s promise that he wouldn’t “want to be your [Pence’s] friend anymore if you don’t do this” — and in spite of Trump’s following through on that promise when the president egged on a mob chanting “hang Mike Pence” by tweeting “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
Mike Pence did, in fact, have the courage to do what should have been done that day, and he would bring both prudence and principle to the Oval Office in the unlikely event he were to occupy it.
He’s earned that acknowledgment, at the very least.
Celebrity Candidate Roulette
For heaven’s sake.
There really was no reason to nominate either Herschel Walker or Mehmet Oz to be the Republican candidates for Senate (in Georgia and Pennsylvania, respectively).
Oz is a pseudoscientific medical pin-up who’s used his platform to promote both abortion and irreversible “gender transition” treatment for minors. Walker was a really great football player who’s well known and whose athletic career is fondly remembered by Georgians. On the other hand, he claims to have been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder by a witch doctor and his ex-wife alleges that he held a gun to her head, telling her, “I’m going to blow your f***ing brains out.”
So who could have possibly predicted that Walker might not be the slam-dunk candidate that the notoriously good judge of character Donald Trump (“He would be unstoppable, just like he was when he played for the Georgia Bulldogs, and in the NFL. He is also a GREAT person. Run, Herschel, Run!”) said he would be.
Now, Walker has been revealed to be the father of three children he had never mentioned publicly. For at least one of them, a ten-year-old son with whom he has no relationship, he was ordered to pay child support.
His campaign manager reassures us that “he has honored all obligations” to his children. I suppose the issue is resolved, then.
With any replacement-level candidate on the ballot in Georgia, Republicans could be confident that they’d knock off incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock. With Walker on the ballot, Warnock has a shot at pulling off a second upset in three years.
And as for Oz, what do we get for his progressive past? According to a poll from Suffolk University and USA Today, a favorable view of Oz from only 28 percent of voters and a nine-point deficit as compared to Democrat John Fetterman. Just 17 percent of independents view Oz favorably, while 57 percent view him unfavorably.
Maybe national headwinds will be enough to save Walker and/or Oz, but if Republicans lose either or both races, it’ll be because they took low-reward, high-risk propositions on the advice of a low-reward, high-risk 2024 contender.
ADDENDUM: Read Michael Brendan Dougherty’s lamentation of the Biden administration’s extremism in the transgender debate. I’m a long-term optimist on the issue, but he’s right that before any triumph comes “overflowing rivers of tears.”