In the midst of the angst and partisan turmoil over the Jan. 6 committee hearings, it is wise to step back and consider their role in our republic, and how historians will look at the events and key players, five years, 30 years, even 100 years from now. The actions of Mike Pence, I am confident, will be consistently judged, no matter the vagaries of future generations’ shifting priorities.
If John F. Kennedy could update his 1956 Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Profiles in Courage” (few acknowledge his ghost writer, Ted Sorensen), the late President would certainly include a chapter on then-Vice President Mike Pence that infamous day in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Kennedy might write, “At the moment of greatest danger, to his career, and the lives of himself and his family, he stood in the breech and defended the Constitution, at great personal peril.”
I was gifted my copy of “Profiles in Courage” when I was 7 years old, as a civics lesson. I have read it so many times in the past 58 years. I still have it on my shelf among more than 1,000 American History books. The book is designed to give Americans, through brief biographies of, unfortunately, all-white U.S. Senators, an appreciation for the axiom that the Republic is not guaranteed. It must be defended with our honor and our lives if necessary.
You are probably familiar with most of the stories. Highlighting a few is a worthy exercise. Of course, tomes of equal import should be written about minorities and women, who in the 1950s still did not merit, by then-current standards, recognition for their courage. Heroes and Heroines such as Frederick Douglass, Cesar Chavez, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Victoria Woodhull, Abigail Adams, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and many, many more.
Particularly illustrative in the Kennedy book are Thomas Hart Benton’s opposition to the expansion of slavery into the Territories. On June 10, 1850, Benton declared, “No more slavery compromises!” And with that, ensured the enmity of pro-slavery Missourians (though he was a slave owner) and the Legislature, which voted to “un-elect” him less than a year later.
Equally courageous, not because of the view he held (opposite of Benton’s), but because it was a principled stand that went against his personal interests and guaranteed his political demise, was Senator Daniel Webster’s March 7, 1850, speech, in which he declared: “Mr. President, I speak today not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a northern man, but as an American … I speak for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause.” He outraged his home state so completely, that resignation was his only honorable option.
Other great challenges have been met head-on without regard to politics.
Mike Pence — whether you love him or hate him; agree with his faith-based guideposts or think he is evil incarnate — took extraordinary physical and political risks on January 6, 2021. By refusing to be cowed by then-President Donald Trump into participating in what we now know was an attempted coup, Pence, alone because the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act of 1877 gave him that responsibility, preserved the peaceful transfer of power that has been sacred in America since 1801.
By refusing to leave the Capitol, he avoided the specter of the world watching an American vice president fleeing the seat of government. And though we now know he came within 40 feet of being hung by the Proud Boys, he told the world, “This is still the People’s house … the world will again witness the resilience and strength of our Democracy.” In doing so, Pence saved the Republic.
You see, character is not made during difficult times. It is revealed.
