In addition to being Pence’s friend, Prince had given more than $230,000 to GOP causes between 1992 and the time of the get-together. (His family, likely the wealthiest in the state of Michigan—his sister was billionaire education funder Betsy DeVos—had given more.) Prince’s private military force had a $1 billion contract to provide services in Iraq. It billed the U.S. taxpayers roughly $450,000 per year per man deployed in the country, which was about six times the amount paid to an American soldier. This was privatization—the concept of transferring government functions to businesses—in action.20
For Blackwater’s Prince, politics, business, and religion flowed together in a life that found him in frequent contact with the same people; Mike Pence shared values with Prince and like-minded friends, including James Dobson, whose Focus on the Family also received Prince’s money, and broadcaster/evangelist D. James Kennedy. The mutual support in these relationships formed an informal circuit that was common to the Christian Right political subculture and reinforced by money and displays of mutual admiration. Donors like Prince gave comparatively small sums to see their views promoted and, in his case, received $1 billion worth of government work. Politicians and advocates advanced thanks to the contributions from their benefactors.
Receptions like the one Pence arranged with Republicans in Congress were part of the exchange that kept the Christian Right movement going. So too was the award Pence received—Distinguished Christian Statesman—from D. James Kennedy’s Center for Christian Statesmanship. The center offered a three-week course to attendees, who were called “fellows” but who paid ($16,000 as of 2018), to study subjects such as Bible-based economics and strategies to oppose equal rights for lesbian, gay, and transgender citizens. Previous award winners included Judge Roy Moore of Alabama, who was removed as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court after he refused a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from state grounds. (Moore later lost a run for U.S. Senate after testimony from women who said he had inappropriate sexual or social contact with them as teenagers when he was a prosecutor in the 1970s.)21
Roy Moore and Mike Pence were not likely candidates for the types of honors bestowed on public servants by great institutions. Distinguished Christian Statesman was not comparable to, say, an honorary doctorate at an Ivy League university. However, for the cost of a plaque, a photo opportunity could be created, which might be useful to both the giver and receiver. In this case, supporters gathered at a dinner where, afterward, Pence and his wife, Karen, stood for a picture that was then distributed nationwide by an outfit called PR Newswire, which functions as a self-promoter’s version of the Associated Press.
The statesman award was one of many signs of Pence’s high status within the Christian Right movement. More significant was his involvement with a secretive group known as both the Family and the Fellowship, which spread a kind of elitist fundamentalism by cultivating powerful believers and gathering them together. Led by a charismatic figure named Douglas Coe, the Family housed members of Congress at a house on Capitol Hill, offered leadership training and other services at its headquarters in Virginia, and maintained a network of thousands of members and friends who helped one another with everything from business deals to spiritual crises. It was best known for organizing an annual prayer breakfast attended by many officials in Washington and invited guests from around the globe.
Founded in 1942 by an anti-union, anti–New Deal, anti-Communist Methodist minister named Abraham Vereide, the Family promotes capitalism and Republican-leaning politics at home and what it considers to be American/Christian interests abroad. Vereide was, for example, opposed to the creation of Israel on the grounds that a Jewish state was inconsistent with the “divine plan as declared in the Bible.” The organization’s view on Israel changed as many evangelicals turned to a nineteenth-century theory that the Bible foretold the creation of the Jewish state as a condition of Christ’s return to Earth. This view imagined that God planned the future as a series of events that would work, like tumblers in a lock, to eventually return Jesus to reign over Earth. The establishment of modern Israel was key to the plan and would be followed by the Rapture, during which believers would rise to heaven, leaving others to endure an agonizing period called the Great Tribulation. Under these conditions, Jews would have the opportunity to convert or be consigned to hell. Either way, Zionism would play an essential role in fulfilling Christianity’s dream of paradise.22
The supernatural Christian view of events supplied an exciting narrative for understanding current events. It was popularized by a flood of books, which began with evangelist Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth. Lindsey cherry-picked current events, ignoring progress in science, medicine, and even the cause of peace to create the sense that a crisis was building. He expected the Rapture to come in the 1980s. Although it didn’t, his book kept selling, eventually reaching twenty-eight million copies sold worldwide. The book would inspire hundreds of imitators and even a shelf full of apocalyptic books for children and young adults.
End-times fervor was, and is, common in the growing number of churches and organizations where the absence of a hierarchy encourages a freewheeling approach to belief. The Family falls into this larger trend, which finds Americans moving away from the structure of churches, denominations, and doctrine in favor of a spiritual commitment to the love of a supernatural Jesus. In this version of American Christianity, a supernatural relationship with Jesus is primary, and individuals choose their own moral codes. (Deep concern for common morals and ethics is, in this view, a negative practice called legalism. Legalism is bad because it promotes such behavior as humility or charity while ignoring the notion that a profession of belief, offered at any point, outweighs all the good or evil that a person ever does.)
Although faith is enough for any Christian to find eternal reward in heaven, the Family’s leaders considered the Bible stories of Jesus and his early followers and concluded that even today, on a supernatural basis, some people are held closer to Him than others. It is this favored position, preordained by God, that explains their worldly success. As one of the Family’s documents notes, Jesus has “levels of relationships much like concentric rings.” His favorites are obviously those He enabled to be powerful, including high-ranking politicians and businesspeople.
Coe promoted the notion that God works through powerful “key men” who can create His dominion on Earth. With God’s endorsement, key men have justification for violating social norms and common ethics, and their successes are more evidence of God’s favor. And just as God’s will should be obeyed, superior men and women deserved the obedience of their lessers. This self-reinforcing logic meant that insiders could be forgiven almost anything—past, present, or future—once they professed their faith. As a result, criminals, dictators, and mass murderers like Indonesia’s Suharto have all been counted as members or friends who could be useful and may be God’s tools for His work on Earth.
To reach key men and promote its view of Christian government, the Family funds trips abroad for members of Congress and others. Senators and House members travel on the group’s dime but arrive in the Middle East, Asia, or elsewhere, with their status as American officials well understood. The difference is that their mission is devoted to the Family’s Christian Right goals. On these missions, Americans meet and encourage locals who are friendly to the cause. In Africa, for example, Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, was identified as a key man despite documented human rights abuses of his regime. The Family worked through him—it sent members of Congress to Uganda—to promote antigay initiatives, including a call to institute the death penalty for some homosexual conduct.23
Although the Family uses members to promote its favored ideals, the exploitation is mutual, as members use the organization to cultivate friendship and business contacts. In this way, the Family functions like a fraternal organization on steroids, where wealth and power are displayed and celebrated and can be amplified through r
elationships. As Michael Cromartie of the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center told The New Yorker in 2010, “You bring an oligarch over to the Cedars and he says, ‘Ah, these are my kind of people. They have pictures on the wall of all these presidents, they seem to be in touch with power, they know people with money, this will help my business.’”
Among members and friends of the Family, Congressman Mike Pence would be a midlevel figure ranked below senators and better-known national Christian activists like his friend Charles Colson. However, he was ranked closer to God than most other mortals. And like so many whom the Family drew close, he was still on the rise. Pence became more visible as an outspoken critic of most of the policies Barack Obama proposed after Obama became president in 2008. At the same time, Pence aligned himself ever more closely with groups sponsored by the industry billionaires Charles and David Koch.
In April 2009, Pence signed a pledge, which had been distributed by the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, announcing he would vote against any program that would increase federal revenues in order to combat climate change. This meant he would oppose a so-called carbon tax on the pollutants that caused climate change, which Koch-owned facilities spewed at a rate of twenty-four million tons per year. Echoing the Kochs’ false claim that a proposed carbon levy would be the largest tax increase in history, Pence was a leader of the effort that defeated a “cap and trade” plan that would have limited carbon emissions and created a market for credits that polluters could earn and trade for reducing their output.
Pence also became a leading promoter of the so-called Tea Party movement, which various powerful conservative organizations helped to create in response to Obama. Typical was an Americans for Prosperity spin-off called FreedomWorks, which was led by former congressman Dick Armey and helped organize protests that were intended to draw greater numbers of people to rally against Obama policies. A classic example of a practice called astroturfing, these efforts mimicked grassroots protest movements. In September 2009, Mike Pence joined Armey at a FreedomWorks rally at the United States Capitol. He stood in shirtsleeves and told the crowd, “I’m Mike Pence, and I’m from Indiana.”
With the same clear, broadcaster’s tone he offered at the 2000 Republican National Convention, the voice Pence used sounded cheerful, but his message was ominous. Squinting at the sun, he said that because of Obama’s proposed health care plan, the nation risked “the abyss that has swallowed much of Europe in an avalanche of socialism.” A year later, after the health care plan was enacted and no abyss swallowed the nation, Pence spoke at another rally organized by the same group on the same spot and made the upcoming congressional election a matter of existential concern. “If we do not succeed in November, all that once was good and great about this country could someday be gone.”24
7
HIGHER AMBITIONS
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
—Psalm 32:8
The GOP and Pence succeeded in a big way in the 2010 elections. After three consecutive losing cycles, the party regained the House with the biggest shift in seats since the 1930s. Mike Pence took two-thirds of the votes cast in his race on November 2, 2010, against his Democratic challenger, Barry A. Welsh, whom he had also beaten soundly in 2006 and 2008. Welsh, a Methodist minister, might have been best known for getting punched in the face when he tried to stop an angry public official in Delaware County from assaulting a newspaper reporter. He suffered a black eye.1
Despite the fact that he hadn’t faced a serious challenge since getting elected in 2000, Pence’s campaign fund-raising had soared. He had more than $450,000 on hand as Election Day passed and was well positioned to simply occupy his seat, becoming more senior with every term, or reach for something bigger. A day after the election, Pence invited speculation about a presidential bid. He resigned as chairman of the House GOP conference—he had been fourth in the Republican hierarchy after Boehner, the House majority leader, and the majority whip. “I have fulfilled my commitment to the Republican Conference,” Pence told fellow Republicans. “My family and I have begun to look to the future. As we consider new opportunities to serve Indiana and our nation in the years ahead, I have come to realize that it may not be possible to complete an entire term as conference chairman.”
In Indiana, people in both parties recognized that Pence, who was in his early fifties, wanted much more. Political scientist Andrew Downs of Indiana University Fort Wayne considered his increasing outspokenness and his standing with the powerful Kochs, who had started to bring Pence to their private gatherings for big political donors, and wondered if he might be planning to run for president. With the Kochs and their tax-cut-and-deregulation conservatives in his corner, Pence focused on the religious Right, where he was already well known. In September 2010, he gave the most loudly cheered address heard at an annual Values Voter Summit sponsored by the Family Research Council (FRC).
Founded by Pence’s friend and mentor James Dobson, the Council opposed equal rights for gay citizens and favored restrictions on divorce and a ban on legal abortion. The organization’s leaders said, erroneously, that homosexuals were more prone to pedophilia than heterosexuals, and in early 2010, a spokesman had told a national TV audience watching the MSNBC network that homosexual behavior should be criminalized. The FRC began conducting its annual summits, which were one part revival meeting and one part political convention, in 2006. Fox News network hosts such as Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly were often asked to speak, and politicians with national ambitions used the meeting to impress important organizers who might become supporters.
In 2010, the big star of the event was Mike Pence, who mustered more energy than he showed in most of his speeches and hit every theme on the Christian Right agenda. None of the ideas he presented were new. He called for less government spending and policies to enforce his version of sexual morality. However, he did discuss these notions in a way that connected them all, saying, “To those who say that marriage is not relevant to our budget crisis, I say you would not be able to print enough money in a thousand years to pay for the government you would need if the traditional family continues to collapse.” Pence was also a bit more strident than usual, saying, “We must demand, here and now, that the leaders of the Republican Party stand for life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty without apology!”
At the summit, Pence showed he could be fiery as well as smooth. He also left no doubt that he was as much preacher as politician—which, in this setting, served him well. “We must not remain silent when great moral battles are being waged,” he said. “Those who would have us ignore the battle being fought over life, marriage, and religious liberty have forgotten the lessons of history. As in the days of a house divided, America’s darkest moments have come when economic arguments trumped moral principles.”2
The performance was rewarded when the attendees were polled on whom they preferred for president. Pence won 24 percent of the vote. Mike Huckabee, who was actually a preacher before he became governor of Arkansas, trailed him by two points. The showing won Pence some headlines in the news media but wasn’t so impressive that it established him as a favorite in the field already jostling to win the GOP nomination for 2012. Weeks later, Pence would learn a bit more about his chances at a fund-raiser in Iowa. With its first-in-the-nation caucuses, Iowa was a key state for presidential hopefuls, and it was also being worked by eight different prominent Republicans, including Newt Gingrich and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Pence also visited New Hampshire, which holds the first presidential primary every four years, and South Carolina, which also selects delegates early.
All the exploration revealed to Pence that others eyeing the nomination were well ahead when it came to organization, money, endorsements, and name recognition. Also, the House of Representatives was hardly a reliable starting point for someone who wanted the presidency. In all of U.S. history, only one person, James
Garfield, had made such a leap. Many others who had served in the House had become chief executive, but only after holding some other office, such as senator or governor. The Senate seat that would be contested in 2012 was held by Richard Lugar, who was a GOP institution. This meant that, for Pence, the logical next step would be to run for governor, as the popular sitting Republican, Mitch Daniels, was barred by term limits from running in 2012. Daniels, moderate in both manner and policy, was highly popular and would have been a shoo-in if the state constitution hadn’t made a third term impossible.
Daniels represented a potential problem, however; he also had been mulling a possible presidential run. If Daniels did run and failed in his presidential bid—he was not well known nationally—and if Pence ran for governor, it would be more difficult to say that Pence, another Indiana governor, was also seeking the presidency. Finally, Daniels, whose wife and daughters were strongly opposed to the idea of a presidential bid, decided to drop out. Then Daniels’s lieutenant governor, Becky Skillman, represented another potential obstacle for Pence in Indiana. But Skillman also took herself out of contention for the governorship, claiming sudden health problems, which was convenient for Pence.
“My end-of-year physical exam revealed minor health issues,” Skillman said in a television interview. “Nothing will interfere with my devotion to my duties as lieutenant governor, and I plan to continue the same pace as always. However, it is best to continue without the additional stress of a gubernatorial campaign.”
During his last year in the House, Pence cemented his position with Christian conservatives by advocating two extreme antiabortion measures. One would have required that all women undergoing abortion be shown ultrasound images of the embryo or fetus and hear a description of its condition before the procedure. The other would have denied federal funding for abortion to rape victims if certain levels of force had been absent from their assault. (This was what some politicians called “legitimate rape.”) Neither proposal passed, but cosponsors like Pence could point to the effort as a sign of their determination to do everything possible to prevent as many women as they could from having the procedure.3
The Shadow President Page 15