This piece is appearing tomorrow as a newspaper op/ed in my very red congressional district (VA-06).
********************
I feel for Mike Pence, as I think about all that he did for four years and how all that ended up.
And I also hope he comes to understand the biblical kind of lesson his experience can teach him.
I sympathize with Pence for how traumatic it doubtless has been to have 1) his life endangered 2) by a shocking betrayal that also 3) turned his life-plan to ashes.
And I also hope this religious man grasps what the biblical tradition would say is the lesson he should learn about the deal his ambition led him to make with Donald Trump.
It has long seemed apparent that the deal Pence made with Trump was that, so long as Trump was President, Pence would be supportive of Trump to the point of embarrassing servility in exchange for Pence being in the lead position to be heir to Trump’s following in 2024, when Pence was hoping he might be elected President.
But then, after all that groveling loyalty, and with just days left, Trump turned on Pence, betraying him utterly.
All because Pence would not take his subservience to Trump to that final point of violating his clear constitutional duty in order to abet Trump in a futile attempt at a coup d’etat.
The biblical line that first comes to mind here is “What shall it profit a man who gains the whole world and loses his soul.” Which means that the Bible would say that Pence never should have made such a deal. Not with that kind of man.
None of the heroes of the Bible would have made such a deal. One cannot imagine Moses or John the Baptist groveling in the service of such a man—even to gain power later.
But for Pence, the lesson goes beyond that biblical line: for he not only sold his soul, but did not end up gaining that power in the world he sought.
And that’s because of the kind of man with whom he made that deal—a lesson that’s embedded in a long tradition of religious stories that convey the theme, “Don’t make a deal with the devil. You’ll lose your soul, and end up cheated.”
Pence’s experience with Trump parallels those stories: the manner of Trump’s betrayal of Pence is so monstrous as to make him as apt a representation of “the devil” in those stories. And as in those stories, the monstrous man got his part of the deal up front, but then stiffs the other party’s part of the deal. (As Trump has stiffed so many.) Cheated when, Trump turned supporters that Pence had hoped to inherit into a violent mob chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”
Pence was led into that deal by his ambition. And reportedly, Pence believes that God wants him to become President. But the Bible never shows God asking any righteous hero to grovel to a corrupt man in the hope of getting more power in the future. And the evidence suggests that Pence’s ambition is the opposite of the voice of God.
Had Pence taken the path of righteousness – like those in the Bible shown to be serving God – he was in a uniquely powerful position to perform a great service to the nation, Those serving God do not depart from the path of righteousness. Had Pence listened to the voice of righteousness rather than to the obviously untrustworthy voice of his ambition, he had the potential to perform a great service to the nation.
Once a righteous man in the VP’s position became clear on how unprecedentedly dangerous the Trump Presidency was to the nation – to everything we hold sacred, including the Constitution Trump demanded Pence help overthrow – he would have been uniquely positioned to fortify the side of righteousness.
“Uniquely positioned” because 1) the Vice President has high status, second only to the President, and 2) he’s the only other person in the entire Executive Branch who cannot be fired, because he was elected to his position by the people.
Had Pence chosen to speak up – like the prophets, telling the moral truth to those who need to hear it – it is conceivable that he might have prevented the Republican base from buying into all Trump’s lies; and he might have kept the Republicans in Congress from becoming the craven “Trump Party” they became, intimidated into betraying their oath of office..
Whatever was Pence’s opportunity early on, to advance the cause of righteousness, he has one still now, at this moment while Trump is being impeached for fomenting the insurrectionary violence in which Trump deliberately made Pence a target. That experience gives Pence a unique vantage point, and unique standing to address the nation, and the Senators who sit in judgment: “What do you think, Mr. Pence, about the article of impeachment, and whether Donald Trump was guilty of anything that makes it appropriate – or perhaps even necessary – to bar him from ever holding public office?”