In 2002, one of Weyrich’s organizations, the Free Congress Foundation (later called the American Opportunity Foundation), urged members to become propagandists who understand “the truth of an idea is not the primary reason for its acceptance.” America was afflicted by “sickness and decay,” wrote Weyrich protégé Eric Heubeck, as he called conservative elites to a constant effort to tear down basic structures of society. “We will not try to reform the existing institutions,” he wrote. “We only intend to weaken them, and eventually destroy them.… We will use guerrilla tactics to undermine the legitimacy of the dominant regime.”
The tactics Heubeck suggested might include, he wrote, having “every member of the movement put a bumper sticker on his car that says something to the effect of ‘Public Education is Rotten; Homeschool Your Kids.’ This will change nobody’s mind immediately; no one will choose to stop sending his children to public schools immediately after seeing such a bumper sticker; but it will raise awareness and consciousness that there is a problem. Most of all, it will contribute to a vague sense of uneasiness and dissatisfaction with existing society. We need this if we hope to start picking people off and bringing them over to our side. We need to break down before we can build up. We must first clear away the flotsam of a decayed culture.”
Besides sowing dissatisfaction, Heubeck’s advocacy jujitsu called for Christian conservatives to assume the posture of a persecuted victim “only interested in being left alone.” With this pose, “we will surely gain the sympathy of the public. The dominant culture will see its life-force being sapped, and it will grow terrified. It will do whatever it takes to destroy its assailant. This will lead to the perception that the dominant leftist culture is empty, hollow, desperate, and has lost its mandate to rule, because its only basis for authority is coercion, much like the communist East Bloc. Sympathy from the American people will increase as our opponents try to persecute us, which means our strength will increase at an accelerating rate due to more defections—and the enemy will collapse as a result.”
The persecution drama Heubeck described was a poor fit for a foundation that had received tens of millions of dollars from wealthy donors, but it was consistent with other narratives promoted by conservative activists. The Christian Right, which operated in a nation where God is mentioned in the Pledge of Allegiance and is printed on its currency, nevertheless claimed victim status. This way of thinking saw a “war on Christmas” in the phrase “Happy Holidays” and a threat to heterosexuals in extending the legal right to marry to gay and lesbian couples. In this way, every time society granted more people fuller participation in any realm, Heubeck and others could claim that their side was losing something. By building up a sense of threat and loss, Heubeck could create a dramatic, energizing narrative of a people in the wilderness fighting a terrible foe. “Popular culture now acts as a giant narcotic, offering an escape from the difficulty and hard work of realizing our higher selves,” he announced. “Our movement’s intention is to break that addiction for as many individuals as possible.”10
* * *
Like Heubeck, Mike Pence had a flair for the dramatic. However, he possessed a limited repertoire and tended to repeat himself. After joining Paul Weyrich’s Republican Study Committee, which sought to push GOP House members ever rightward, Pence repeated his seafaring story in another speech on the dangerous state of public affairs. He began, “Picture, if you will, a ship at sea. Shoulders back, a proud captain steps onto the sunlit deck of a tall ship plying the open seas of a simpler time. Its sails are full and straining in the wind. Its crew is tried and true; its hull, mast, and keel are strong. But beneath the waves…”
One again calling himself the “frozen man,” Pence again described his two rebellious votes against GOP leaders as heroic choices. He ended, however, with an optimistic observation about what he saw as President Bush’s course correction. “After weeks of confusion from Massachusetts to California,” Pence said, “this president has brought moral clarity to the debate over same-sex marriage by calling on Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to protect marriage. The president rightly called marriage ‘the most enduring human institution,’ and so it is. Marriage was ordained by God, confirmed by law, is the glue of the American family, and is the safest harbor for children.”
The danger children faced, and which required “safe harbor,” in Pence’s view, was same-sex marriage. In Massachusetts, the State Supreme Court had recently determined that gay citizens should be permitted to marry, noting that “barring an individual from the protections, benefits, and obligations of civil marriage solely because that person would marry a person of the same sex violates the Massachusetts Constitution.” In California, a new civil partnership law had given gay couples all the legal rights and benefits of marriage. President Bush’s response, which Pence supported, came at a press conference where he said, “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and I think we ought to codify that one way or another.”
Bush sounded as if he favored the social conservatives in the matter, but he moderated his statement with the observation that he thought it was “important for society to welcome each individual.” Society had been moving in this direction, granting ever-greater acceptance to gay Americans. In 2003, the United States Supreme Court had struck down state laws that criminalized homosexual behavior, and public opinion polls were beginning to show a gradual, steady rise in public acceptance of homosexuality. However, this trend was being driven by a faster shift in opinion among younger people, who were not as likely to vote as older citizens. Also, the Supreme Court ruling and changes in certain states had alarmed Christian Right activists who once again saw that liberal courts were working against them. GOP strategists, believing these voters could be mobilized by appeals to their fear, just as gun owners were rallied by NRA warnings about the specter of regulations, moved to make opposition to marriage equality a centerpiece of 2004 political campaigns.11
Bush’s chief policy advisor, Karl Rove, concluded that conservative Christians, who naturally favored his candidate, would be more likely to come to the polls if they had a chance to fight the acceptance of gay citizens by voting to amend state constitutions to ban same-sex unions. (Writer Andrew Sullivan reported that Rove “told gay Republicans … the only thing that mattered to him was there were more votes in gay-bashing than in standing up to the bigots in his base.”) In prior election cycles, Rove-run campaigns, assuming they could energize bigoted voters, had used rumormongering to suggest opponents were homosexual. This tactic was especially wicked as used by Rove, since his parents had divorced when his father announced he was gay.12
In 2004, the Rove-led GOP would push for anti–gay marriage amendments to state constitutions. This state-by-state approach promised anti-equality Republicans a better chance to pick up votes in key spots, even though the national tide was moving against them. This problem was borne out by a January 2004 poll commissioned by the Christian Right–oriented American Family Association, which showed that 60 percent of respondents favored legalizing gay marriage, 8 percent approved of civil unions for gay people, and only 32 percent wanted to ban legal status for gay couples.13
In social and political terms, Indiana seemed a likely place for an anti–gay marriage amendment. However, statutes already barred same-sex unions, and no judges, clergy, or couples had attempted to defy the law. With nothing to rile Christian Right activists, no groundswell developed to drive an amendment campaign. However, Congressman Pence, spying an opportunity, moved quickly to identify himself with the issue. At the start of 2004, he announced he was a coauthor of an anti–marriage equality amendment to the U.S. Constitution and began promoting it across his district.
On a Thursday night in February 2004, Pence faced a crowd of people at a local civic center in Columbus and tried to get them interested in the gay marriage issue. It was a struggle, as they were far more interested in the war in Iraq. Already costing far more than the Bush administration had project
ed, the war was part of America’s response to the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. However, Iraq had no link to the attacks, and administration claims that its dictator, Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction had proven to be false. “Weapons of mass disappearance” was how a veteran who stood to address Pence described them. Pence replied that Saddam was himself a dangerous weapon. This argument didn’t impress the crowd, but Pence had little to worry about with voters. Having defeated his previous opponent by thirty points, he didn’t yet have an opponent for November. Still, he had made a continuous effort to raise money and, in the off year, had collected $570,000. When a challenger finally arose, she was able to collect only $50,000 for her entire campaign and was swamped by thirty-seven points.14
In 2004, in each of the eleven states where they were proposed, voters approved anti–gay marriage initiatives. However, each one of them would eventually be overturned by the courts. In the meantime, the federal constitutional amendment Pence proposed never became more than something to talk about. President Bush all but declared the proposal to be a political stunt when, two months after the election, he announced he wouldn’t push for it because he had come to deem it unnecessary. Mike Pence did not follow Bush. Secure in his district, which he kept winning by higher margins, Pence kept talking about gay marriage and other social issues even in places like his hometown of Columbus, where Cummins Engine had promoted a more liberal social agenda and voters did not prioritize these concerns.
Pence’s great power at the ballot box was enhanced by the squeaky-clean image he maintained in the press. Where others were damaged by personal problems, family difficulties, or financial issues, he went untouched by these kinds of challenges. The closest he came to this kind of trouble might have been on the occasion of the bankruptcy that announced the abrupt death of the Pence family business, Kiel Brothers. With more than two hundred convenience stores/gas stations and a wholesale petroleum business, the company had lost the confidence of the bankers who provided the credit to keep it going. In part, the trouble was a matter of the difficulty of competing in a business with little room for error. However, under Pence’s brother Greg, who ran it after their father died, Kiel Brothers had not kept pace with rivals who had newer stores in better locations. Despite doing more than $340 million per year in business, the firm went into decline.
As one of the lawyers who worked with Kiel Brothers would eventually recall, only a steady effort to rejuvenate the chain would have extended its life, and in the end, the bankers wouldn’t back such an effort. But even considering the causes, the firm’s condition was remarkably bad. Kiel Brothers owed vendors, workers, and others more than $100 million, with $9 million due to the State of Indiana, mainly for environmental cleanups at its facilities. When the assets were finally liquidated, most of the creditors received about fifty cents on the dollar. One of the losers was Mike Pence, who previously had income from his ownership stake but lost the value of his stock, which had been estimated between $100,000 and $250,000.15
While some political opponents tried to make an issue out of Kiel Brothers, it never caused much trouble for Pence in elections. Indeed, every time he ran, he won by a greater margin, and this popularity with voters freed him to do things that might have been difficult for another conservative. An example arose in the weeks after the 2004 election, when a woman from Sierra Leone was stopped for speeding in her car in Muncie and was arrested when police discovered a fifteen-year-old deportation order issued when she had been divorced and her husband reported her to authorities. Pence’s intervention with the Department of Homeland Security worked: the deportation order was dropped. The congressman said he was moved to tears by the outcome. She “belongs with her family,” he said.16
As he helped a woman whose dilemma had become a cause célèbre in Indiana, Pence showed himself to be a compassionate conservative at home even as he struck a more doctrinaire pose in Washington. In 2005, he was elected chairman of Weyrich’s Republican Study Committee, which had grown to more than one hundred members and sometimes challenged party leaders for control of the GOP agenda in the House. More committed to ideological purity than rank-and-file Republicans, the RSC functioned much like other interest groups that pushed the party rightward. While electioneering organizations like the Club for Growth used money and primary challenges to this purpose, the RSC organized its members to vote as a bloc, thereby threatening efforts that House leaders might make to pass legislation.
On social issues, the group took cues from leading Christian Right organizations like Focus on the Family, which was run by psychologist James Dobson. The son of a traveling evangelist, Dobson first gained fame in the 1970s as a proponent of corporal punishment for children. With broadcasts, publications, conferences, and other activities, Focus on the Family promoted prayer in public schools, abstinence-only sex education, and the notion that God’s acts and not evolution accounted for life on Earth. Dobson was stridently opposed to marriage equality and even operated a ministry that sought to change the sexual orientation of gay men and women. (After it was sold to other operators, this ministry was shut down and its managers apologized for harming participants in its programs.)
Under Pence, the study committee pushed for spending cuts to offset billions in relief after Hurricane Katrina (the proposal was defeated) and mounted a failing effort to allow some Social Security funds to be invested in private accounts. Both ideas were political poison with general election voters, and GOP leaders were never going to let them be approved. The push-pull between the study committee and GOP leaders often strained their relationships. At one point, after his old friends Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay read him the riot act, a chastened Pence hustled to an engagement at the Longworth House Office Building, where he abandoned the text of a speech he was about to give on the “massive spending splurges” indulged by his colleagues. Instead, he told a crowd of young conservatives, “I believe in the leadership of this Congress. I believe in the men and women who lead the House of Representatives and the Senate. I see them as men and women of integrity and principle, who work every day to bring the ideals of our Founders into the well of the people’s house.”17 This abject pandering was noted in the press as something that should have embarrassed Pence but it foreshadowed much more craven capitulation to come.
* * *
Embarrassing as it may have been to read about it in the newspaper, Pence’s tail-between-the-legs retreat showed he knew how to be a team player when it was required. Pence wanted to become more powerful within the GOP establishment, and to that end, he had tried to get along with Hastert and DeLay when he could and did what he could to help his party raise money. Whenever possible, he showed his support for his colleagues, even if it meant answering tough questions back in Indiana. For example, when he voted to increase the salaries paid to members of Congress, which was not a popular cause among fiscal conservatives, he explained it by saying, “I fear Mrs. Pence more than I fear voters.” This was, no doubt, true.18
In 2006, as his party lost control of the House, which they had captured in 1994, Pence saw his chance to reach for a big prize: the post of minority leader. “We didn’t just lose our majority,” said Pence as he announced his bid, “we lost our way. In recent years, our majority voted to expand the federal government’s role in education, entitlements, and pursued spending policies that created record deficits and national debt.”
Unmentioned, but obviously the target of Pence’s critique, were outgoing Speaker Dennis Hastert and majority leader Representative John Boehner of Ohio. (Boehner had assumed the office when predecessor Tom DeLay had been indicted and resigned.) Ten years Pence’s senior in the House, Boehner was one of the best-liked members of Congress. An old-school politician, he was willing to practice give-and-take within his party, which meant that he had helped many members, including lots of those who belonged to the RSC. However, as the two men pursued the job, Pence only seemed to win over people who couldn’t cast votes. Archcons
ervative pundits like Phil Kerpen of Human Events favored him because he had supported their agenda by voting against Medicare drug benefits and seeking to change Social Security. Politicians who were sensitive to what voters preferred tended to oppose these ideas, which might explain why they failed and why Boehner clobbered Pence in the leadership race by 168 to 27.19
Some congressional Republicans suspected that Pence’s bid for the minority leader post was not truly sincere and that he might have acted with Boehner’s secret encouragement. Better to have a contest, went this line, than a coronation. Two years later, when Pence wanted the job of House conference chairman, Boehner supported him. The office was concerned with making sure the process of lawmaking worked smoothly, and Pence would do it well. Pence would also do well by colleagues who wanted to make sure that donations from wealthy Christian conservatives continued to flow. This work required the ability to speak the religiously imbued dialect of Christian Right politics and a willingness to stroke egos when necessary.
In December 2007, Pence showed his flair for ego-stroking when he organized House members to hold a reception for wealthy heir and businessman Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater USA, a private military company that had contracted with the U.S. military to provide security services. Four months before Pence’s show of support, on September 16, 2007, Blackwater guards had opened fire while accompanying a U.S. convoy at Nisour Square in Baghdad, killing seventeen civilians and wounding twenty others. (Four Blackwater guards were eventually charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison for their roles in the massacre. One of these men successfully petitioned to have his conviction voided and was to be retried.)
The Shadow President Page 14