Review: (2) Ian Frazier, Tales of Adventure for Boys
Is it nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of fortune down in the garage?
James Russell Lowell
Read Part One of this post here!
After Hanover, Pence got a law degree from the University of Indiana and went into private practice. In college he had been a Democrat and worked for Jimmy Carter’s campaign. Then he became a Reagan Republican, out of a deep admiration for Reagan. In 1988, when Pence was twenty-eight, he ran for Congress and lost. The negative campaign that he felt had been forced upon him disappointed him and betrayed his values, he said. Two years later he ran and lost again. He became a local right-wing talk-show host, ran for Congress a third time, finally won, served six terms, then ran for Governor and won. From there, his reputation grew nationwide until Donald Trump asked him to be his vice-president. The idea was that Pence would nail down the vote of the far-right Christians, back before it became clear that they were for Trump regardless.
Pence says again and again how important it is to be loyal. He finds ways of explaining and forgiving Trump’s excesses (the attacks on veterans and their families, the Access Hollywood tape). He brings up his religious faith a lot to Trump during the frequent times they’re together during the campaign and while he’s serving as VP. Sometimes he asks Trump to pray with him and Trump does. After the 2020 election he knows that Trump did not win but he keeps his mind open to Trump’s lies. The pressure on Pence to join the deniers builds. He says his loyalty is to God, the Constitution, and the president, in that order. Trump learns that Pence is the official who certifies the electoral votes in Congress. If he throws out the electoral votes, as Trump cajoles and bullies and insults and threatens him to do, the election will be decided by the House of Representatives, where the Republicans have a majority. By refusing to certify, Pence can overturn the election. All kinds of people urge Pence to obey Trump and refuse to certify. Pence prays hard about this question. He reaffirms for himself that the Constitution does not give him such power—in a private conversation, his friend Dan Quayle backs him up—and so he refuses to bend.
Events unfold, the Trump-instigated riot begins. In Pence’s telling, he does consider remaining in the Senate chamber as the mob approaches. In fact, waiting for the riot to pass in an office adjoining the chamber he informs his Secret Service detail that he intends to stay right where he is. He has no dreams of glory, he just wants to do his job. The fantasy of him confronting the rioters, as I’d imagined it, would’ve got tangled up in the details even if such a dramatic action had occurred to him. He is with his wife and his daughter, who have come to observe the historic day. The Secret Service says that when the mob arrives the agents won’t be able to protect the family. Pence then agrees to go with them to a garage in the Capitol basement.
Even there he continues to show backbone. The Secret Service wants him to get into an armored limo parked on an exit ramp. He refuses; he’s not going to provide a visual of a frightened VP motoring away from the building, and he knows that once the limo’s hundred-pound door closes on him he will no longer be in charge. So he and his family hang out among the vehicles in the garage until the riot has been subdued and the building cleared. Then they return to the Senate, which reassembles and proceeds with the business of the session. Early in the morning of the following day Pence certifies the election.
A man of faith who swore to uphold the Constitution upheld it, under duress, and by his own courage kept democracy alive and functioning. Trump learned that Pence’s faith wasn’t just a political costume, but a real inconvenience. His true-life moment of glory proved to be unshowy and unglamorous, not to mention somewhat overlooked in the crush of events. Pence did not endorse or vote for Trump in ’24, but he did congratulate him after he won. Now Pence is teaching at a religious college. He was never thanked enough for what he went through, though he does not say so himself.
Our politics have raised the voltage of fear and rage and increased the possibility for more storms like the one Pence found himself in. The unhinged Trump environment may provide other opportunities for glory. Recently, the biggest such moment came when Trump survived the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. The photo of him rising to his feet amidst his Secret Service people, holding up his bloody fist, has all the drama a glory-dreamer could ask for. But the whole episode is so awful to think about that many news roundups of 2024 did not include the photo in their year-end retrospectives.
Going back to that moment on January 6: Imagine Pence, with his family, and Nancy Pelosi next to them, and maybe Mitch McConnell, and Chuck Schumer, and Dick Durbin, and others, all refusing to seek safety and instead standing up to the mob together. At the time, the approval rating of Congress was down near the single digits, where it usually is. The senators and representatives had an opportunity to shake that tired perception, if only for the sake of doing something unexpected and maybe even glorious. In chapel in my high school, we used to sing the hymn “Once to Every Man and Nation,” by the nineteenth-century poet James Russell Lowell, whose first verse is:
Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side.
In books and plays and poetry, our literature has been telling us forever that these moments do occur. There will be more. Maybe some brave person will seize one of them, and win deathless glory, and the whole country will say, “How could you be so noble!” And then what will happen?
Ian Frazier’s Paradise Bronx, an exploration of Bronx geography, history, and artistic invention, was published last fall. He has appeared in Book Post writing on lists, Charles Portis, and Trotsky in the Bronx.
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I like your appreciation for the 'guts' that Pence showed, but the thought that the senators could wait out the attack in their offices seems like a fantasy, and maybe you meant it as so.