SING A SONG OF MIKE PENCE!

By Edwin Cooney

I grew up singing “a song of six pence, a pocket full of rye.” Last Friday, November 11th, right in the middle of celebrating the valor of our veterans, President-elect Trump replaced New Jersey Governor Chris Christie with Vice President-elect Mike Pence to head his transition team. Thus, for the next four years and perhaps beyond, Mike Pence will invariably “trump” six pence!

Of course, anyone who proposes to know the significance of that appointment, unless his initials are DJT, is only guessing, but guessing is one of the activities Americans do most frequently.

A “conservative” governor of Indiana when he was selected last summer to run with Mr. Trump, Michael Richard Pence insists that he’s “a Christian, a Conservative and a Republican in that order.”  Born in Columbus, Indiana, on Sunday, June 7th, 1959, Pence was raised a Roman Catholic but became a “born again Christian” while at Hanover College.  He, his wife Karen, and their three children (Mike, Charlotte and Audrey) now attend an evangelical megachurch.  Young Mike Pence is now serving in the Marines in Afghanistan. (Note that Mike Pence is the third Indiana governor to be elected vice president.  The first was Thomas A. Hendricks in 1884 under Grover Cleveland and the second was Thomas R. Marshall under Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and 1916.)

As I see it, the Pence appointment to head the transaction team was the single most significant decision President-elect Trump has made since the election for the following reasons:

(1.) It suggests that Vice President Pence is going to be a major factor in the Trump administration.  This implies that President-elect Trump feels the need for the assistance of a professional politician at the highest level of the administration.

(2.) As a “Tea Party Republican” with both legislative and executive experience, what he is asked to do will be a strong indicator of what path the Trump administration may be taking regarding any one plan or problem.  There are three types of Republicans struggling for dominance in Washington these days.  They are “Paul Ryan Republicans,” “Freedom Caucus” or “Tea Party” Republicans, and “Donald J. Trump Republicans.”

(3.) While the appointments of Lieutenant General Mike Flynn to be Chief of Staff and Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo to head the Central Intelligence Agency indicate that President Trump is sticking to a hardline foreign and immigration policy, it appears his appointments to the positions of Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense may be more moderate choices.  Both Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich, who recently appeared to be candidates for the State Department, seem to have been eclipsed by the name of Mitt Romney who was part of the “Never Trump Club” not so long ago. 

To the extent that he may influence President-elect Trump toward more moderate appointments and positions, Mike Pence can be a positive factor in the next administration. However, Governor Pence’s signing of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act last spring permitting merchants and other vendors to withhold their services from LGBT Americans in the marketplace reveals a self-righteous Christian arrogance that isn’t even conservative. Although Governor Pence did ultimately sign an amendment to that bill protecting the rights of LGBT citizens, that was only due to pressure by political moderates and Indiana businessmen and women who feared devastating economic reprisals.

Mike Pence, Indiana’s fiftieth governor, was a mild, smooth-talking candidate during the October 4th Vice Presidential Debate with Senator Tim Kaine. It was a welcome contrast to Mr. Trump’s harsh, crude and reckless debating style.  Pence demonstrated his political prowess from his experience as a conservative talk show host between 1994 and 1999.  His rise to national prominence may well quell the candidacies of Texas’s Senator Ted Cruz and Florida’s Marco Rubio, but Governor Pence may be the greatest threat to civil rights since Alabama’s Sheriff Bull Connor during the 1960s.

Humankind has suffered centuries of repressive governments going back to Medieval Britain’s King John (1199-1216), Henry VIII (1509-1547), and Bloody Mary (1553-1558). The repression of chattel slavery, Indian genocide, anti-Catholicism, the Ku Klux Klan, and anti-immigration during our own era were also thought to be relics of the past.  It’s therefore stunning to have freely selected Mike Pence’s song of human repression in 2016.

I, too, am very concerned about Donald Trump’s lack of knowledge or appreciation of personal manners or of the importance of tolerance in both domestic and international discourse.  On the surface, Mike Pence appears to be an antidote to Mr. Trump’s failings.  In reality, he may be more dangerous. He’s smooth as ice cream, but underneath I think he’s meaner than the proverbial junkyard dog! 

President-elect Trump has indicated some understanding for our healthcare needs, and the wisdom of public works à la FDR to rebuild our infrastructure.  Vice President-elect Pence, meanwhile, belongs to the Tea Party wing of 2016/2017 Republicanism, the kind of GOP elephant who, since President Obama proposed infrastructure improvements, has been concerned only about balancing the books in both Indiana and Washington, D.C.  Individual safety, jobs, and religious freedom for all are an anathema to the Ted Cruz’s and Mike Pence’s of 2016 America.

From what I’ve heard so far, Trumpian cries of wounded outrage are nothing compared to the singing siren song of Mike Pence with or without a pocket full of Paul Ryan and those singing twenty-four Liberal blackbirds baked in Pence’s pie.

Were the choice between Trump or Pence, voting for Trump would have been almost -- but not quite -- easy.

Respectfully submitted,

Edwin Cooney