Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Mike Pence’s autobiography is an important book because Pence served for 4 years as vice-president and is likely to be a candidate for president in 2024. This book has a heavy religious gloss. Every chapter begins with a biblical verse, and throughout the book Pence frequently prays for guidance and comfort. Pence narrates the book. He is an accomplished public speaker. He has a preacher/pastor delivery with a moralizing tone that can feel like his message is being sent down from above. For secular readers, such as me, Pence’s highly self-righteous tone is off putting. It is easy to get the impression that the strong religious tone is intended to bolster the impression that Pence is a virtuous man. But a close reading of the book shows that Pence is motivated more by ambition than virtue. Throughout his book Pence tells us (and repeatedly told Donald Trump) that he was there to “serve.” In doing so Pence opted not simply to “serve,” but to be subservient to, Trump. Such sycophancy is not required by the constitution. The vice-president is constitutionally inferior, but not subordinate, to the president. Pence seems to have been oblivious to the fact that the office of vice-president is constitutionally separate from and independent of the president, and that, unlike cabinet officers, he did not serve at the pleasure of the president. Pence did not seem to understand, or even want to understand, that his responsibility was to serve the people of the United States, not the president. Pence adopted a conspicuously sycophantic stance towards Trump. When posing with Trump Pence adopts a full fawning gaze: his eyes are dead set on Trump, at all times. Pence's fawning pose was a product not only of Pence’s mistaken view that his principal duty was “to serve the President,” but also of his desire to ingratiate himself with Trump so that in 2020 Trump would again make him his running mate. Undoubtedly Pence also had 2024 in mind, thinking Trump would be able to name his successor. Pence’s unfailing fawning seems to have caused Trump to think he could have his way with Pence on virtually anything, including rejecting electoral votes. Pence’s implacable and shameless sycophancy finally led to his being hoisted on his own petard on January 6. Pence was so obsequious that, when he attended meetings with Trump and administration officials, he tells us he always prefaced his “interjections” by saying it was “for the president’s benefit … at which point [Trump] would almost invariably nod appreciatively in my direction.” In that same vein Pence tells us that he would “serve as a sounding board, or WHEN ASKED, to offer [his] best advice.” (Emphasis bold added). These are the clamorings of a wingman, not a leader. Pence is never reluctant to let Trump off the hook for some of his worst moments, whether it be the Putin fiasco in Helsinki or the Charlottesville catastrophe. As to Charlottesville Pence says he wasn’t troubled by Trump’s “good people on both sides” remark because he knew Trump was not a racist. But the issue wasn’t whether Trump was or is a racist, but whether he was giving comfort, and doing so overtly, to racists because they were part of his base. Pence is similarly dismissive of Trump’s horrific conduct surrounding January 6. After his book was published Pence said that he did not think it was a crime" to follow bad advice of your lawyers." But Trump was not acting on the advice of counsel when he encouraged a mob which knew to be armed to march on the capitol. Likewise, Trump’s calling attention to Pence’s “lack of courage” in a tweet sent in the midst of the carnage that day, which resulted in Trump’s thugs searching for Pence in order to give him his just desserts for betraying Trump, was not done by Trump on the advice of his lawyers. Nor was Trump relying upon legal advice when he failed to act for over 4 hours to call off his mob. On none of these occasions was Trump relying upon legal advice. To the contrary, and surely Pence, a lawyer in his own right, knows that. Pence's disingenuous willingness to excuse Trump's hideous omissions and commissions on January 6 disqualified both of these men from serving in high office. A devastating revelation is Pence’s assertion that early in their relationship he viewed Trump as a “friend,” and continued to do so despite the events of January 6, where Trump stoked hatred of Pence and placed Pence, and his wife and daughter at risk of mortal harm. Though Trump never apologized to Pence, and Pence admitted to being “angry” at Trump, he “forgave” Trump and continues to see him as a "friend" because Pence believes in “grace” and that everyone is entitled to “second chances.” It is one thing to grant “forgiveness,” but neither “grace” nor commonsense entail calling a person a “friend” who has done dastardly things that place you and your family in harm’s way. Does Pence see no need to hold Trump accountable for his illegal and immoral conduct which resulted in numerous deaths on january 6 and placed thousands of persons in mortal danger including Pence and his family? Pence has said that Trump's hideous attempt to overturn the 2020 election was "unamerican," but Pence's desire to stay on the right side of Trump and his supporters induces Pence to continue supporting GOP election deniers (Blake Masters, Lee Zeldin). This is an example of ambition defeating virtue. Pence’s willingness to turn a blind eye to so much of Trump’s misconduct reflects Pence’s desire to remain on good terms with the man he thinks (or thought) would control his destiny. This can only be attributable to Pence’s boundless political ambitions. In one of his few confessions in the book, Pence admits to having let his ambition overtake him in running a losing political campaign in 1990. He admits that in that campaign he “had been overtaken by my drive for success … [such that the campaign] quickly devolved into a race to the bottom, characterized by negative personal attacks…. I had allowed my ambition to get the better of me.” He had an epiphany: he had run a campaign “bereft of the values that had brought me to conservatism in the first place.” In an article he published at the time entitled “’Confessions of a Negative Campaigner,’” he promised never to do that again It is quite clear his embracing Trump broke that promise. He danced with the devil; got too close to the sun. Pence’s autobiography makes clear that his motivation is ambition, not virtue.