Mike Pence really hates populism. Perhaps we should not say “hate,” because the former vice president’s Christian disposition demands he pray for what he cannot change and for those who he feels have lost their way, including Donald Trump, who many think stirred up an angry mob to kill Pence on January 6, 2021. But if Pence had his druthers, he would take a time machine right back to the Reagan administration and leave it there.
The problem with Pence’s approach, which is detailed in his new book, What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience, is that he still doesn’t acknowledge the fundamental realities that led to the Trump-era populism he so despises.
Full disclosure: I have not yet read Pence’s new book since it was released June 2. But I did get to hear him speak Monday night, when he addressed the National Press Club, previewing his manifesto for 60 minutes before a warm crowd that gave him the loudest applause when he recalled his certification of the 2020 election. During a fireside chat with CBS correspondent Robert Costa, Pence embraced the conservatism of Reagan, William F. Buckley, and Barry Goldwater, author of the 1960 book Conscience of a Conservative, and he lamented that the Republican Party had lost its way.
“It truly is a new Republican time for choosing, but this isn’t just about the Republican party and its fortunes,” Pence said. “I wrote this book because I believe these timeless ideals have served the American people: a commitment to limited government, constitutional rule of law, a commitment to a strong national defense, American leadership on the world stage. Pence extolled “the values and principles and liberties that have always made our nation strong and prosperous and free.”
As if Republicans pre-Trump had nothing to do with violating Americans’ liberties, expanding the federal administrative state, increasing the power of the executive, or with the crony capitalism that mocks the free markets he exalts as the cornerstone of true conservatism.
In Pence’s telling, the right has only started seriously undermining these principles during the modern populist era. While there is an ongoing “challenge from he progressive left,” he said, “I wanted people to know that …there’s a new threat rising from within our ranks that I call the populist right. It’s a political movement as well that questions whether America should continue to exercise our role as leader of the free world, embraces big government solutions, protectionism, marginalizes right to life and other values.”
Beyond supporting tariffs and “Marxist” national industrial policy, these populists infected Trump with “isolationist” ideas and are breaking America’s covenant with “our cherished ally Israel” and abandoning Ukraine to Russia. Diplomacy over war? Reagan would never have done that. (But, of course, he did.)
“You know, I’ve held the view now over the last four years that I believe, as leader of the free world, the American people and the West need to stand behind the people and military of Ukraine until that Russian invasion is defeated and repents, but again, some of the isolationist rhetoric has made its way into the administration, which is frustrating because they stood so strong in the Middle East,” Pence charged, complaining that this “isolationist stuff” has led to “stops and starts” in support for Ukraine.
That seems to be at the core of his grievance. Beyond the domestic politics of the “New Right” which is indeed more populist than it is conservative in myriad ways, Pence holds it is not sufficiently interventionist enough on behalf of other countries, whether Israel or Ukraine (George Washington would have something to say about that). Moreover, Pence maintains, it does not advocate using force to impose American values abroad (John Quincy Adams might have a word), and puts too much stock in pursuing a diplomatic peace with Iran rather than bombing it into submission (again, what would Reagan do?).
Pence lauded Trump for ignoring these impulses and launching the “truly historic” war against Iran, but he has concerns about the emerging peace deal. “I view that we would be better off allowing the armed forces of the United States to finish the job on our terms, open the Strait, take down their offensive capabilities, and give the people of Iran a real shot at freedom.”
Pence’s superpower has always been his unflappable public demeanor. His midwestern bearing and approach to politics builds capital and networks and wins elections. But he is unreflective to a fault. After the September 11 attacks, he settled on two Bushian ideas: that “they hate us for our values” and that “if you are not with us you are against us.” Every war, every encroachment on civil liberties, the enormous and growing debt due to war spending, every soldier who came home injured or in a coffin, was in service to those two nostrums.
Pence has ignored that the wars he supported, and everything that came with them—not the populists who rose up after—destroyed his party. He ignores that Trump (like Bernie Sanders on the populist left) is a reaction to the failures and betrayals in Washington brought on by the bastardization of the “conservatism” he idealizes. He wants a correction in Washington. A “rediscovery” of first principles.
A time machine is good for learning lessons, but we don’t need one to know that the future is better off without Pence and his Republican Party. No, Mr. Pence, we are not going back.
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