Pence: Puppet or Patriot?

Pence: Puppet or Patriot?

– By Ed Kociela –

It has always been tough to get a clear reading on former Vice President Mike Pence.

He speaks in convoluted sentences, parsing his words deliberately, measuring them to the point where his message is buried somewhere in a cascading jumble difficult to decipher.

That’s why his statement Wednesday that he would consider testifying before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol requires some probative thought.

Pence is one of those guys who goes out of his way to use a lot of words to say very little of substance. That’s why I fear his comment Wednesday about considering giving testimony to this committee means absolutely nothing.

Here’s what we know about Pence.

First of all, he did the right thing when he refused to give in to the pressure placed upon him by the former president and his crew when they demanded he overturn the election results. Doing the right thing isn’t always easy and often costly. Just ask Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wy., whose career as a representative for the people was trashed because she dared to go against the former president and his lies about the election and suspected other offenses, some of which could possibly see him in court on criminal charges. But, Pence did the right thing and upheld the vote, even when facing an angry lynch mob.

Second, we know that Pence has a staunch code in his head that he is loathe to compromise. He may be ridiculed for his naivete and prim and proper coursing and his mindset may be be more “Leave It To Beaver” than “Grace and Frankie,” but there is every reason to believe that he doesn’t care and is sincere in his convictions. He’s a 1962 Rambler revving it up at the drag strip against a Hennessey Venom GT, hanging hope on to the old fable about the tortoise and the hare.

Third, and most importantly, having had a small taste of power as vice president, he has ambitions to step up to the Oval Office. To do this, he would need to slip the shiv to his former boss, something that would take nerves of steel, to be honest — again, reference Liz Cheney here — and could result in a future of judging spelling bees with another former Indiana-born Vice President, Dan Quayle.

If it was just about anybody else, I could make a case for some Machiavellian plotting afoot. A more politically aware mind could very well use the threat of going to the House committee to testify in an attempt to get the former president to pack it in. More than anybody, Pence knows exactly the who, what, when, where, why, and how of all of the former president’s motivations and involvement in any number of activities — civil or criminal.

We know that if he had a vengeful mind, it would be very easy to throw Donald Trump under the bus and nobody would blame him because, well, the former president did virtually nothing while an angry mob built a gallows from which to string up Pence on the steps of the Capitol.

We know Mike Pence has a working knowledge of government and its peculiarities, something we cannot claim about his former boss, and that he has a certain respect for the system. We may or may not like his politics or ideology, but we can at least be pretty sure that he understands the Constitution on, at a minimum, a working level.

We can also agree that the moral code of the former president remains light years apart from that of Pence.

Most of all we know that at heart, Mike Pence is more of a traditional conservative, far removed from the bunch now calling the shots.

I don’t know how Pence would weather the storm if he jumped into the presidential race because he just doesn’t seem tough enough to withstand what would surely be stinging barbs from his former boss. I mean if Liz Cheney runs be ready to watch the fur fly. There is no love between her and Trump and it would be a genuine knockdown, drag-out. I’m not sure how she would fare in such a slugfest, but she has good political genes inherited from her father who could slice and dice sharper than a Ginsu steak knife. But, wait, there’s more. He is connected to old money within the conservative wing and could help her raise a ton, as well as collect old political debts. Again, I have no ideological similarities with Dick Cheney, but I do respect his incredibly brilliant mind and tenacity, qualities that could navigate conservatives back to the docks from which they sailed and like any good father would make sure paybacks were severe for anybody who mistreated his daughter even though she has more than proven that she can carry her own water. She would dispatch Pence quickly then bend and bloody Trump’s nose.

The key here is not so much what kind of damage Cheney or Pence can do during a campaign, but what they can do in the run-up to it whether through testimony or investigation. If criminal charges stick against Trump, as I would just about be certain will happen, it becomes a moot point. Even desperate conservatives would not run a guy facing hard time. I think. Well, at least I hope.

So, as excited as I was when I first heard Wednesday morning that Pence might consider giving testimony, I’m not quite sure how far he would be willing to go.

Would his testimony be innocuous fluff, deflecting the shrapnel from his former boss or would there be some meat on those bones?

Only then will we learn if Mike Pence is a puppet or a patriot.

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