The Constitutional Contradictions of Mike Pence
We should be grateful he got the 12th Amendment right amidst serial blunders
So Help Me God is the title of former Vice President Mike Pence’s memoir. The title accurately conveys Mr. Pence’s supreme devotion to God uber alles according to his Christian faith. Every chapter begins with a selection from the Bible as if Mr. Pence was delivering a sermon. The United States Constitution is denied even a cameo appearance in the chapter headings, although Mr. Pence was sworn to uphold and defend it during his 12 years in the House of Representative (2001-2013), four years as Governor of Indiana (2013-2017), and four years as Vice President (2017-2021).
That hierarchy of importance for a public servant in Mr. Pence’s mind is alarming. Article VI of the Constitution excludes religious conviction as relevant to the discharge of public duties: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United States.” The word “God” appears nowhere in the Constitution—even in the Preamble setting forth its purposes. President George Washington, who presided at the constitutional convention, wrote to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, on August 18, 1790: “For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
Mr. Pence shortchanged the Constitution on an industrial scale until he stood like Horatius at the Bridge on January 6, 2021, to enforce the 12th Amendment’s protocol for the peaceful transfer of presidential power. President Donald Trump’s weaponized mob was screaming “Hang Mike Pence” because of his refusal to surrender to Mr. Trump’s repeated unconstitutional, vulgar and belligerent demands that he reject unchallenged state-certified electoral votes. (Not a single state legislature certified a competing set of electors then or later). Even the highest level of courage is not made of sterner stuff then Mr. Pence exhibited on January 6th. We all owe Mr. Pence a debt of gratitude for preventing Mr. Trump from regressing the United States to monarchical government indistinguishable from British King George III.
But let us stop there in praise of Mr. Pence. He was otherwise silent during two decades in public office while the White House amassed limitless power through a combination of congressional dereliction and presidential usurpation. The White House stole the war power from Congress, the crown jewel of the Constitution. James Madison, father of the Constitution, instructed: “In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department.”
Mr. Pence voiced not a peep of protest as Presidents initiated or continued wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Syria without congressional declarations of war. Mr. Pence is chronically brought to tears remembering his father’s service in the Korean War. But he has not a syllable of criticism of President Harry Truman’s flagrantly unconstitutional entry into the conflict without a congressional declaration. Mr. Truman dishonestly defended the presidential war involving millions of casualties, the threat of nuclear weapons, and millions of Chinese soldiers, as a “police action.”
President Trump threatened to destroy North Korea. Mr. Pence did not admonish the President that only Congress is endowed with that power. Throughout Mr. Pence’s public life, Presidents have claimed the power to play prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any person on the planet on their say-so alone based on secret, unsubstantiated speculation that the corpses at some future time might present a national security threat. Mr. Pence has not uttered a word of disagreement or alarm at such limitless presidential power to assassinate.
Since Mr. Pence entered the House in 2001, the Constitution has been pulverized across the board to coronate the President. Executive agreements for treaties. Executive orders for legislation. Spending money not appropriated by Congress for that purpose. Secret government in lieu of transparency by bogus invocations of state secrets or executive privilege to block congressional oversight. Dragnet, warrantless surveillance of the entire citizenry in lieu of warrants issued by neutral magistrates based on probable cause to believe crime is afoot in violation of the Fourth Amendment and the cherished right of privacy.
Mr. Pence, was AWOL in defending the Constitution. Why was he surprised by the Trump-incited January 6th insurrection aiming at his murder? Had he forgotten President Trump’s megalomaniacal boast on July 23, 2019: “Then I have Article 2, where I have the right to do anything I want as president?” Trump more recently insisted that the Constitution be “terminated” to undo his 2020 election defeat without evoking push back from Pence.
His mind is intellectually untidy like a Jackson Pollock canvass. He worships Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount injunction, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Yet Mr. Pence exults over the assassination of Qasem Soleimani in Iraq. Mr. Pence has never seen a United States war that he didn’t like, sneering at statesman Benjamin Franklin’s adage, “There never was a good war or a bad peace.”
Mr. Pence’s contradictions reach their summit in unconditionally denouncing discrimination of any sort while unconditionally defending the right to discriminate if based on a religious teaching, for example, antipathy based on sexual orientation or a belief in White Supremacy. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Crack Up, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposite ideas in the mind, at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” I beg to differ. It is a mark of treacherous insincerity and intellectual opportunism.