“George Washington had his Benedict Arnold,” the caller said. “And Donald Trump had Mike Pence.”
That was it.
The caller hung up after delivering that short, bizarre message.
It was in response to a column I’d written about former Vice President Mike Pence, a native Hoosier, correcting President Trump’s false assertion that Ukraine started its war with Russia. Russia, in fact, launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine and followed up with an attempted invasion of that beleaguered land.
Pence, I argued, had decided his greater loyalty was not to the man who once was his boss, but rather to this nation.
And to the truth.
The caller disagreed.
He felt Pence owed fealty to the president who encouraged an enraged mob to try to kill his own vice president.
The caller is not alone in feeling that way. Over the past four years, whenever I’ve written any kind word about Pence, I have heard from folks who agree with neither Pence nor me.
These calls and notes mystify me.
Often, if the criticism of the former vice president comes by email, the writer makes a point of establishing his bona fides as a devout Christian. Almost always, these writers identify themselves as evangelical Christians.
One would think that would mean they felt a greater affinity for Mike Pence than Donald Trump.
Pence’s faith has been his guide star throughout his political career. Pence, after all, famously described himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican—in that order.”
It’s a rare Pence speech that does not refer to the Bible or remind his listeners that he considers his public service as act of faith.
Trump, on the other hand, understands as much about Scripture as a warthog does about nuclear physics. He considers the 10 Commandments to be a set of challenges—obstacles to be overcome—rather than key bits of moral instruction.
Yet, overwhelmingly, so many of the devout in this country have chosen to deny a Godfearing man in favor of a God-ignoring one.
That’s a mystery that will take time to solve.
Maybe my caller was one of the faithful.
Maybe not.
It’s possible that he thought that, as he saw it, the rupture of the Pence-Trump relationship was more a disagreement and power struggle between two powerful men.
After all, the language the caller used was curious.
“George Washington had his Benedict Arnold. And Donald Trump had Mike Pence.”
This is strange on so many levels.
In the first place, Benedict Arnold didn’t just disagree with George Washington. No, Arnold betrayed the fledgling nation he’d vowed to serve and defend.
He did so because he thought the young America hadn’t properly acknowledged and appreciated what he’d done for it. He thought this supposed ingratitude justified treason.
Trump, too, took an oath to defend this country and its people. When things didn’t go his way in the 2020 election—when 81 million Americans decided they wanted someone other than him to be president—he thought their supposed ingratitude justified betraying his oath of office.
That’s why he summoned an angry mob to try to deny and overturn the will of the people.
Pence went in a different direction.
He decided to honor his oath, the one he took with his hand on the Bible. He sided not with the angry man and the angry mob, but with the nation.
That’s one strange thing about the caller’s message.
The other is that he equated Donald Trump with George Washington.
The source of Washington’s appeal to his fellow citizens and their willingness to follow him, even through grim times, sprang from his reluctance to hold and wield power. His public career was marked by renunciations and resignations.
Any time there was pressure put on Washington to assume kingly trappings, he walked away. These endeared him to Americans, who felt that he could be trusted with great power because he clearly did not want it.
He was motivated not by ambition, but by duty.
Trump is a different animal altogether. His ambition for unchecked authority is ravenous while his sense of obligation to anything other than his own narrow interests in non-existent.
That is the part the caller—and so many others like him—get the most grievously wrong.
Mike Pence could not possibly be Benedict Arnold.
Because Donald Trump is no George Washington.
