Governor Mitch Daniels sits down with Vice President Mike Pence to discuss lessons in preserving freedom in the midst of a global pandemic, faith traditions and self-governance, DOGE, and January 6th.
Governor Mitch Daniels sits down with Vice President Mike Pence to discuss lessons in preserving freedom in the midst of a global pandemic, faith traditions and self-governance, DOGE, and January 6th.
Intro (00:02):
Welcome to The Future of Liberty, a project of Liberty Fund hosted by Mitch Daniels.
Mitch Daniels (00:16):
Greetings, friends and welcome to The Future of Liberty Podcast, a series of the Liberty Fund. We've had a string of really illuminating and exciting guests here, but none quite to match our guest today, the former Vice President of the United States, former governor of Indiana. More important than that, a good friend to so many of us. Mike Pence. You're a champ to come on and join us today and the Liberty Fund. Thank you.
Mike Pence (00:45):
Oh, it's great to be here at Liberty Fund and even better to be here with you, Mitch. I appreciate you having me on.
Mitch Daniels (00:51):
You and I know, but much of America may not know Indiana is the home of vice presidents. You stand in a surprisingly long line. Have you looked back at 'em? Do you have a favorite or a least favorite among your five predecessors?
Mike Pence (01:07):
Well, I'll be respectful and not mention my least favorite, but I did graduate from Hanover College where at least for a couple of years a vice president went there, Thomas Hendricks. But I feel a great sense of indebtedness to someone you know well who was Vice President of the United States under President George Walker Bush, Dan Quayle, who I think did an extraordinary job and in particular in the area of deregulation, which doesn't nearly get enough credit, he created at President Bush's direction, what came to be known as the Competitiveness Council, and at a time when an administration actually was raising taxes, working out a budget deal that was politically fraught for the president, Vice President Quayle was leading an effort that I believe contributed to an enormous amount of dynamic economic growth, freeing up business from federal red tape. And that apart from him just being just an archetypal Hoosier down to earth as an outstanding Vice President, Dan Quayle's my friend and would easily be my favorite.
Mitch Daniels (02:29):
Well, that's a great choice. I also like Thomas Marshall who was pretty, you're pretty nimble with one-liners and he had a million of 'em. I don't know what kind of vice president he was, but he was pretty entertaining.
Mike Pence (02:41):
Yeah, Thomas Marshall had lived through some very interesting history and there are some historians who believe he probably should have been President at one particular point, but he was always gracious about it and it Would've been good for the United States if somebody else had been president at that time.
Mitch Daniels (02:58):
Unquestionably.
Mike Pence (03:05):
No, it's a wonderful thing though, and you and I both understand what your viewers and listeners might not know, that Indiana was a swing state in the latter part of the 19th century, and it was. There were literally back, back-to-back presidential elections where Republicans had a Vice President from Indiana, then the next ticket for the Democrats had a Vice President from Indiana. It was a pretty extraordinary time.
Mitch Daniels (03:29):
Absolutely right. Interesting. You mentioned, remind us about the Competitiveness Council. You and your administration led a very similar and very effective effort. Some of us believe that the surge in the American economy in the late teens had at least as much to do with your regulatory or deregulatory policies. Take two away for each one you add or that sort of approach maybe as much as the tax reductions did. I mean, so there's more that work remaining to be done, but you folks really advanced it.
Mike Pence (04:13):
It was President Trump [who] set a framework where three or four federal regulations would be required to be repealed from the code of federal register when any one regulation went on. And I would tell you as I traveled around the country, there were an awful lot of particularly small business owners who would thank me for the tax cuts, thank us for getting the tax cut and reform act through at the end of 2017, but almost in the same breath would say tax cuts were great, but the most important thing you did for our business was cut red tape. And my hope is that the new administration, which has expressed the same ambition, it's going to be just about that and that and unleashing American energy, I think were real drivers during the three years of our administration saw 7 million good paying jobs and set records for low unemployment, particularly among minorities in the country, which is a great source of pride for me and for those four years,
Mitch Daniels (05:22):
It moves me to observe that and have discussed with previous guests here that as much attention and as important historically as the Dobbs Supreme Court decision was the Chevron case- in some ways may have more dramatic effects once again by reigning in what had become a completely out of control federal regulatory establishment.
Mike Pence (05:48):
Well, I tell people I don't apologize for it. I welcome the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade returning that question to the American people, but I told people what that will mean to the culture. Chevron, I believe could mean to the economy of America for generations because as you know, the scale was tipped in the direction of federal bureaucrats that there was a deference. The Supreme Court said that courts would have to show the bureaucracy in disputes over red tape, but the fact that it's now been overturned in its entirety, I actually think will have repercussions for generations to come because now businesses can go on a level playing field into court and make the case against the bureaucracy. It's probably the biggest shot against the administrative state. And in that real sense, the advancement of economic liberty in more than a generation. I agree.
Mitch Daniels (07:01):
My amateur status as an interviewer is showing I meant to and should have brought a copy of your terrific book, So Help Me God, so I could wave it around for the audience, but I'll simply draw their attention to it. Thank you. Some of the questions I want to ask you come from having read and enjoyed that book, you have to tell the story of your high school graduation and your grandfather's gift. I thought it was one of the more interesting moments that you anecdotes in the whole presentation.
Mike Pence (07:37):
Yeah. On my mother's side, my grandfather was an immigrant from Ireland, but on my father's side, my grandfather was just a hard bidden, self-made man, south side Chicago. And the story in our family that my father repeated often was that on the day that he graduated from high school, his father said, I got you present out front. And he walked out believing. Even then in the mid-1950s, his father, who had done reasonably well, had bought him a car and it was waiting to head into the world and his father walked him onto the front porch and opened the door and waved his arm and said, here's my gift to you. It's the world. Now go take from it what you can. And he walked in the house. My dad repeated that many times to me and my three brothers.
Mitch Daniels (08:29):
I'm sure throughout his life it was probably worth more to him than that car could ever have been,
Mike Pence (08:32):
I think so. My dad ended up building a small business in a small town in southern Indiana, really lived the American dream. But coming up in the kind of family that says, my father's most often repeated phrase to us boys was climb your own mountain, find your passion, pursue it, and work hard. And I've tried to convey that to our three kids who've all gone on to have families of their own and all three of them are in public service. Mitch, it's a surprise to me. We've got two families that are in the military and one that's a working prosecutor, and Karen and I are very proud of their lives. Much more proud than anything we've accomplished.
Mitch Daniels (09:22):
Yeah, no, you ought to be, I know a couple of the kids and they're just what you'd expect from Mike and Karen Pence.
Mike Pence (09:28):
Yeah, thank you.
Mitch Daniels (09:31):
You said that among the other, I know you became a student of the principles of liberty and thought a lot about it, weren't told, weren't raised from birth to have any particular point of view, but you got there thoughtfully and you said that Russell Kirk was one of the most impactful people you read or studied. What was it that he had to say that shaped the views that you've now been a champion of for so long?
Mike Pence (10:06):
Well, I think this might be how you and I are a little bit different. I wasn't raised in a particularly political family.
Mitch Daniels (10:12):
Yeah, well, me either.
Mike Pence (10:17):
My father had no use for politicians or lawyers. So you can imagine I'm still a great source of pride, but I'd actually, when I got interested in politics, my dad sent me to his lawyer. He happened to be a Democrat and that’s where we diverged. But when I started in politics in the Democratic party, but when I went off to college, I kind of came under the tutelage of a brilliant historian named the late George M. Curtis III, who would be very involved over the years in Liberty Fund activities in his retirement. And he began to introduce to me the concepts about the constitution, about limited government, and it began to take shape in me. I joined the Reagan Revolution, never looked back,
(11:06):
But after my first four raising politics, I found myself running a small policy group in Indianapolis and had the opportunity to invite Russell Kirk to come for a series of speeches. I had been exposed to some of his writing. Of course, anyone, even as I was starting out in the conservative movement, was familiar with his epic book, The Conservative Mind. But we invited him to come and give a lecture and I had a moment with him over breakfast the day of his speech in Columbus, Indiana, and we were chatting over eggs and toast, and there I am sitting all 30 years old and I'm talking to really the intellectual father of the modern conservative movement. The man whose book launched William F. Buckley's career, launched National Review. It would be he would inspire not only candidates, but a president in Ronald Reagan who saw him as the lodestar. Anyway, I'm sitting across the table at breakfast at the Holiday Inn and I actually looked at Russell Kirk and I said, now, would you consider yourself a conservative? Are you a libertarian? Are you a neoconservative? He looked at me the way old men sometimes look at young men patiently and said, I'm a conservative.
(12:33):
And I actually pressed him on it. I said, what do you mean by that? And he said, I wrote a book about that. I'll just send it to you. And within a week I got a copy that I still have to this day of not The Conservative Mind, but The Politics of Prudence by Russell Kirk, which really I probably haven't taken a vacation in 30 years without taking a paperback copy of that book. The signed copy he sent me stays in a chair spot on the shelf, but it really exploring literally the foundations and the history of conservatism from Edmund Burke forward. So he was a kind gentleman. When I was elected to Congress a decade later, I gave a copy of The Politics of Prudence to every freshman member of Congress every two years. And it's still a place that I go to refresh my mind and my sensibility about the genius of the American experiment and the timeless value of the principles that we espouse.
Mitch Daniels (13:42):
Let me ask you about the experiment and one of its foundations, or at least what some of its founders thought, and that was religious faith.
(13:53):
You're as faithful as anybody we've known in politics. You famously described yourself as a Christian, a conservative or Republican in that order, which I thought was a very nice formulation. And so many people from the beginning of the republic on have said that our system is only made for a religious people. And people from John Adams to at least Dwight Eisenhower have all made the same observation and almost the same words, A reality of our times is that at least for the moment religious observance has dropped any way you measure it. Are we running a big risk in terms of the preservation of the republic or can a modern more secular society maintain its fidelity to these principles?
Mike Pence (14:57):
The phrase actually comes from our first Vice President, John Adams, who in a course that I was, I'm helping to teach at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, we just covered this. It was inermis that he sent to a battalion in his first year as president and he was urging them to carry themselves in an upright way and honor all the civilian population that they would encounter. And that's where the line he throws in at the end of the order that I said, our constitution was formed for a deeply religious people and it's wholly inadequate to the governance of any other. And so he was admonishing them to be true to their faith.
(15:40):
There's no question that the notion of self-government requires people to be self-governing and that I think while traditions have changed and religious practice has changed, I still think most Americans cherish their own faith traditions and they see them as a wellspring for character. For me, that's the indispensable quality in the country, understanding that in a free society, people have to, in the main, have the character to take responsibility for themselves, for their own, to look after their neighbor and to expect people in public life to reflect the same. So I, I'm very bullish on the future. I think the vitality of faith in this country is growing. I certainly saw even as we passed through the difficult days of the pandemic, how many people reflected on the importance of faith. And I think in the days ahead, just ensuring that we'll always respect the parts of the First Amendment that say that Congress will make no law establishing any religion, never tipped the scales for one religion over another, but also the recent Supreme Court cases. Ensuring the free exercise of religion I think is encouraging people to be more bold about their faith. And that's a good thing for the nation that you mentioned character.
Mitch Daniels (17:35):
And there are some who believe that character is the indispensable or most essential equality in top leadership without singling out anybody because there are plenty of examples these days of people who have attained high positions whose personal conduct and character, let's just say doesn't necessarily measure up to the leaders we've most admired in the past. Is it essential or is personal character in top public positions essential or overrated?
Mike Pence (18:19):
No, I think I really believe it is essential. I think we would both agree that maybe the greatest basketball coach of all time, John Wooden has a wonderful quote where he said, don't be so much concerned about your reputation as your character.
(18:40):
He says, reputation is what people think about you. Your character is who you are. And I think in public life, look, people have different social habits, different ways of expressing themselves, but for me, the essential character in public life is to keep your word to do what you said you were going to do. And for me, that was when I wrote that book, the title of the book itself ultimately was inspired by the oath of office that one takes to support and defend the constitution of the United States. I took that oath as a member of Congress, you took it as a governor, you took it in other various roles that you served at the federal level. And to me, a lot of times when we think about character, we think about maybe there are some people that think rough language or rough edges or the rough and tumble of politics, but to me it's what separates and what is indispensable is having men and women in public life that will do what they say they were going to do. The Bible says in Psalm 15, he keeps his oath even when it hurts, and that's an indispensable quality in our country.
Mitch Daniels (20:09):
Well, thousands of people have taken the oath, but very few have been tested in a way you were. We’ll come back to that, but you passed the test that few people have been tasked with taking. I'd like to ask you to reflect back on another enormous moment through which you helped lead this country and that was the pandemic of 2019, 2021 of a chaotic time, really tough time. First talk about it just from the leadership standpoint that decisions that had to be made in real time with very imperfect information and you drew the short straw and had the lead there. What do you remember most and best?
Mike Pence (20:58):
My father served in combat in Korea and I'll never know to the fullest extent what the fog of war means, but I hear combat veterans talk about being in an environment and just simply you don't know what's happening around you. When President Trump asked me in late February to lead the White House Coronavirus task force that he had stood up in January and suspended all travel from China before January was out, my first reaction despite what'll make you smile as a guy that's served in the White House in a couple of different roles, most of my staff said, don't take that assignment.
Mitch Daniels (21:49):
They had your best interest at heart.
Mike Pence (21:50):
They said, why don't you respectfully decline? And when the president called me from Air Force One coming back from overseas and said, I'd like you to do this, I answered the same way I always did with the exception of one notable occasion. I said, I'm here to serve. And I told my staff, we took this assignment and the President believes we have something to offer. We stepped forward. Now, I had the advantage of having been Governor of Indiana and actually dealt when I was governor with two different health crises when I was governor, we'd had the first case of the Middle East respiratory syndrome ever in the United States to appear in Merrillville, Indiana. And what I learned in that moment was the CDC came in my office, they said, this is highly contagious. It's many multiples more deadly than anything COVID would've ever been. And they sat in that office that you sat in when you were Governor. And I said, great, so you're here. When are your people going to get here and take care of what needs to be done? They said, no, we're here to advise. State of Indiana does this. I had the experience of understanding the role of governors,
(23:17):
the role of state health officials, law enforcement, first responders from practical experience, and I get all the credit in the world, everybody in northwest Indiana who responded There was total containment, the patient recovered. There was never, never anyone that got infected, but that I walked in the door with that experience, which shaped my approach to the national response for Covid. The other was a very small town, Scottsburg, Indiana epidemic of HIV, which was conveyed through intravenous drug use. And we had again dealt with CDC in that. Anyway, I brought all of that experience to bear at the time that I was tapped to lead the task force. There was not a single American fatality. Within two weeks we were being told that there would be literally tens of thousands of fatalities in a short period of time. We had outbreaks in New York, New Jersey, New Orleans, Detroit, Seattle, and also we were in the process of literally airlifting people off of cruise liners where there was a major outbreak. People were trapped at sea. And so it really was an 18 hour a day effort early on just to work one problem, solve that problem, work the next problem.
Mitch Daniels (24:53):
And every problem, virtually every problem implied a choice between individual liberty and public safety.
Mike Pence (25:02):
It did and we did. Our first concern was making sure that our health system didn't collapse because some of the early estimates were if we had the outbreaks in every major city in America, the likes of which had emerged in those first five, that literally we would run into a lack of ventilators for people, a lack of medical supplies, personnel. And so that's what bred the recommendation to the President to take two weeks to slow the spread. If you remember to me, one of the tragic results of that was that many, particularly, particularly liberal governors and mayors took what was meant to be a pause to spin up supplies and made that policy going forward, which worked a great hardship on families, on businesses and schools. We pushed urgently to reopen the economy by early April, but we all remember those shutdowns in a number of states and particularly grievous to me. I know how much you care about education and when you were governor, Indiana became a national leader in educational parental choice. I commend you for that. One of the things that was most frustrating to me was we never recommended that schools be closed
(26:46):
Apart from that first two weeks just to buy time for supplies. But the fact that many states around the country closed schools worked to hardship, I think we're still seeing in some of the national testing, we're still seeing the results of the negative effect on kids. So I think we really owe it and I hope maybe in the next four years here we'll take a clear-eyed view of what happened, what didn't happen, mistakes made. Because the only thing we know about a pandemic like this is it'll be back around in a different form some other way. It might be another a hundred years, but learning the lessons today about how you preserve freedom and ensure the ability of people to provide for their families even while you're balancing the need to deceit of the safety and health of the American people.
Mitch Daniels (27:46):
I want to ask you just another question or two from that time that have to do with truth in public life, truth telling there were untruths either unintentional or maybe not in several cases, lemme just pick out two. It appeared from the very early on that the most to many people that the most common sense, most probable source of the outbreak was the laboratory in Wuhan, not some strange transmission in a fish market with bats involved and whatever that story was, the apparatus in the federal government, the public health apparatus rather brutally beat down those who surfaced that idea, it's now pretty clear that was the source, the FBI says, so the CIA says so.
(28:46):
Many other medical experts have pretty well demonstrated this. So my first question is, is there a benign explanation for not simply the official sources coming to a different conclusion but trying to censor, stifle, condemn those who offered an alternative suggestion?
Mike Pence (29:11):
I just, I've always been careful not to speculate on motives,
(29:16):
But I would tell you I was sitting at the end of the table in the situation room at the White House every day with our task force, and very early on when this issue came up, I am not a health expert, I'm not a scientist, I don't, but it seemed to me that if there was a biomedical, the Chinese were operating in Wuhan that had very likely emerged there. The Chinese from very early on were very resistant to sharing information. In fact, they largely cut a national government out of any information flow in December of 2019, in January of 20, and there really wouldn't be a level of cooperation until the pandemic broke out in this country. And I remember many times asking if it came from a lab and the health experts with Dr. Anthony Fauci and the lead were very insistent that in fact the structure of it could not have come from a lab. The one descending voice at the table was Dr. Robert Redfield, who was the director of CDC at the time, and I believe a virologist and said came from a lab and he would sit at the end of the table and then others at the table would start an argument with him about that. But I give Bob a lot of credit because he spoke his mind and now we know from as the CIA recently confirmed our best information
(31:10):
Is it was one more act of a communist China that put their interest above the interest of the United States for the wider world.
Mitch Daniels (31:29):
You already made reference to your unique experience as a nation's second highest executive and a governor. I have a question about our federal system as it operates today, particularly after the enormous expenditure of borrowed money in the Biden administration, but even prior to that, states have become more and more dependent on the federal government for funding. Is that something that troubles you? And if it does, what's a path to a better way of making decisions about what is to be spent and how much?
Mike Pence (32:18):
Well, I look back at your book, Keeping the Republic, which I think we had a national debt in the $7 trillion range when you…
Mitch Daniels (32:30):
Seemed like a lot of money.
Mike Pence (32:32):
And it was a lot of money, 36 trillion in counting. I think we have an obligation to revive federalism in the country and to in effect divest responsibilities that the federal government has accumulated over the last 75 years in large measure back to the states. Elon Musk is a friend of mine. I worked with him very closely on space issues. I welcome what the Department of Government Efficiency is doing. I'm someone that has believed that the Federal Department of Education ought to be closed and the resources all flow back to the states with the freedom and the ability to innovate. And I welcome that. My hope is that the DOGE'S recommendations about cuts will ultimately make their way into law that the Congress adopts and budgets that Congress adopts. But it's a very useful step. I think in many ways the heavy hand of the federal government, whether it be on education, whether it be on healthcare, has not only resulted in massive national debt that really threatens the vitality of our economy going forward, but it's also it is suppressed innovation at the state level. I'll never forget, a great friend of both of ours, Steve Goldsmith was testifying before Congress about asking for a waiver about being able to use federal funding in Indianapolis for road projects. And he actually, I remember he actually came and said, I will take less money
(34:29):
From the federal government if you'll give me more freedom of how to spend it. And I think I would often remind people back in 23 when I was running for President that said, but they don't have any money in Washington. It all comes from here.
Mitch Daniels (34:46):
Or we borrow it.
Mike Pence (34:47):
Right, and they run it through the program and then they hand it back to us and we're supposed to be grateful they give us our money back. As opposed to I think the whole principle the founders had of limited government of specific enumerated powers presupposes the idea that those things that most bear upon our lives and our families and our enterprises ought to be managed and operated at the state level at the most, whether it's public safety or education or healthcare. And my hope is that we're on the front end of the kind of de-evolution of authority out of government, out of Washington DC that'll promote that.
Mitch Daniels (35:35):
Your point about innovations are really important, an interesting one that with every dollar federal government recycles to the state comes a prescription, a limit, a set of rules and instructions as to how that money is to be spent or not spent. And that's telling the famous laboratories of democracy that you can't run any more experiments,
Mike Pence (36:07):
Right? And it's the whole issue of education innovation. I'm incredibly proud of Indiana's history in this regard, and I don't want to flatter you, but you were there on the ground floor in the 1990s when Indiana became home to the first privately funded school choice program in the country with the late J Patrick Rooney. And then Milton and Rose Friedman created their foundation here. They saw Indiana in the forefront of education reform. And I have to tell you, I just tweeted this morning praise for Tennessee and Texas and South Carolina that in many ways are catching up with what Indiana has been about in universal school choice now for so many years, making that steady progress. But the very idea that you have to go to Washington DC to ask for your money back and ask for permission to use it in certain ways, I just think the founders, I think I've read enough American history to know just how viscerally they would respond.
Mitch Daniels (37:14):
They might be surprised. Yeah.
Mike Pence (37:18):
And you said memorably one time. I quoted you not long ago that, and I hope the DOGE puts this above a door somewhere, that you'd be surprised how much government you'll never miss. And I think people would be surprised how little you would miss the federal government being involved in your local school, being involved in healthcare decisions and the ability, the ability for people to stop the governor on the street and stop their state representative on the street and say, Hey, we've got to fix this. It's geometrically better democracy in action than I got to call my congressman and my senator or write a letter to the president.
Mitch Daniels (38:05):
You're a constitutionalist in thought and action. There's an interesting, I think, very important debate that's been growing up I think I see growing up in the country in this conversation series a little while back, we had our friend Yuval Levin, one of the, I think brightest, most influential young thinkers out there. In his new book, he says that we need to revive the American Constitution, and particularly it's Article one instrument, the Congress needs to be more active than it's been. And that in the process of that you would begin to have once again the give and take of the legislative process as it can operate and that this would be a solution, maybe an antidote to the rather poisonous nature of our recent politics. So that's one point of view. I hear other voices saying Now our Constitution’s outlived its usefulness, it's rigged for gridlock, it's rigged for James Madison to set it up so that factions would counter each other and offset each other. And that's just not suited to a 21st century three breakneck AI world of change. Talk about that if one side's right and not the other, why
Mike Pence (39:42):
The longer I've gone in public service, the smarter I think the American founders were; they studied very carefully the history of the Roman Republic, the failings of it. And the genius of the Constitution that you've all live in writes about in American Covenant is that people forget at the founding of the country, there were extreme diverse viewpoints. There was people that were slave states and there were non-live states. These were rough cut people that had come here carved out a life and pretty much liked the life that they'd carved out. And the collapse of the Articles of Confederation was evidence of the fact that that founding generation was tough and firm in their convictions. But the framing of the Constitution, as he points out, was literally designed to force people to come together and find principled compromise. And I think that the voices out there that I've been hearing for as you have for more than a generation on the left that say we need to revisit it.
(41:16):
We need more justices on the Supreme Court to talk about we need to do way with the electoral college. We need to revisit the First Amendment. The Second Amendment are now being mirrored a bit by frankly, there are some voices on the right that are talking about we need to consolidate and streamline the federal government. When I actually really believe viscerally that what we need to do is get back to putting into practice the form of government that the founders created. And I had a bit of a taste of that, and you did too when you were in Washington DC on a couple of your assignments and the Reagan administration, the Bush administration. But if you remember those early days, the Bush administration, George W. Bush, Congress was in the business of passing appropriations bills. I think there were 13 in number. And we would work till we were bleary-eyed all summer long, passing 13 different bills that would be all subject to amendments on the floor of the Congress, all exposed with significant, even much before the internet had taken off. And certainly before social media people could see what was in bills. But somewhere along the way, and it happened after Republicans lost control of the Congress, but somewhere along the way that spending process collapsed. And what we've seen is now 20 years of presidents in both political parties being handed these massive spending bills
(43:04):
At the end of the year with maybe literally God only knows what's in them, what the DOGE is doing for the American people now is taking a deep dive into finding some of these excessive and absurd elements of some foreign spending bills. But when I see all of that, I say, great, good, great to get it out there. Let's pull it out. Number two though is to me it's evidence of the fact that successive congresses in both political parties have failed to do their job and really hold to account what the people's money is being spent on. And so getting back to what they call
Mitch Daniels (43:52):
Regular order, well order to bring some control to the administrative state. You talked about so much of the running room that the administrative state has, it was seeded to them to it by a Congress that really didn't want to answer the hard questions and punted them to some agency who then had free reign.
Mike Pence (44:13):
Well, you know that better than most is that Congress would default set to, they'd write a certain amount of specificity, but then they've developed the habit of just saying, leave the rest of that to the bureaucrats. And I think having in Washington that says the job isn't to shift resources or power and authority around that, each of the branches ought to be empowered to do what they were created to do. And also there's that larger point that it's the natural friction between the branches that is ultimately a safeguard for the citizenry and that a healthy friction that even when the same party is in charge of two of the branches and my judgment also needs to be restored.
Mitch Daniels (45:17):
My last question has to do with the Constitution also it's 12th amendment which was challenged, at least its alternative interpretations were offered outside of wartime. Very few Americans have ever been put to the test of defending the Constitution and the way that you were in January few years ago. So I always loved your line from so long ago, I'm a conservative, but I'm not angry about it. But you wrote in your book that on that day you were angry was how angry and why,
Mike Pence (46:05):
Let me say, for four years, President Trump and I had a good personal and professional relationship. It surprises people sometimes when I tell them we've never had a crossword between us until those waning days leading up to that fateful day in January.
Mitch Daniels (46:27):
Now, you were never criticized for being disloyal. Some people said loyal to a fault.
Mike Pence (46:32):
They did. I always had the view that when you were vice president, well, lemme tell you, I read an essay by Walter Mondale during the transition before we were inaugurated in 2017, and he's largely considered to be kind of the first modern Vice President, the first one to be really active in administration. And when he had been recruiting me for the job candidate, Donald Trump had used one word to describe what he thought he'd be, his vice president's role. He said, active. And I said, in what way? And he said, well, you know Capitol Hill, you've been on the Foreign Affairs Committee, you're out on the campaign. He said, I want you to be active involved in everything. And he kept that promise. But Walter Mondale had written this essay where he said, the Vice President can't be one more person in the Oval Office asking the president for something, which you've spent a lot of time in the Oval Office. And that's the parade of people that come in, people that get to stand in front of the Resolute desk. They're usually trying to persuade the president to do or not do something.
Mitch Daniels (47:45):
You remember what Calvin Coolidge said that most of the people who come in this office want something. If you just sit dead still, they will go away. It doesn't work for every president still. But he was talking about exactly the, I'm taking that one.
Mitch Daniels (48:03):
On it's phenomena and you I've taking that one on.
Mike Pence (48:05):
Well, but Walter Mondale said the vice president can't be one more person asking the president for something. So the vice President owes the president his opinion once and in private. And I hued to that for four years with very few exceptions. In my book, which you've been kind of mentioned, I recount a few moments when President was asking for opinions about moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem. He called on me in the cabinet room to speak up. I spoke up even though I was in a minority at the time, supporting moving the embassy. But virtually on almost every occasion when I had an opinion, particularly sometimes a strong opinion and opposition to the direction the President was headed, we kept it in private. And in the days leading up to January 6th, I, in the weeks this theory that somehow as vice president I had authority to decide which electoral college votes to count or to return votes to the state had emerged on the internet.
(49:15):
President brought it up to me on a number of occasions leading into Christmas. And I told him that it was inconceivable to me that the founders of the country would've vested any one person with the authority of which electoral college votes to count presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And that there was a process amended into the Constitution for disputed elections. In any event, we remained cordial on all the discussions. He'd say to me, well, look at it. We'll talk to my people. There's people that think differently. And I said, I want you to know I don't think I have that authority, but if you want to talk to somebody about it, I'll talk to 'em and explain my view.
(50:05):
But it really wasn't until a day or two before that things became more difficult and the President and I made it clear to him one more time on the morning of January 6th that I had no intention of doing what he'd been persuaded that I had the authority to do and that I was going to go to the Capitol and I was going to preside over the county, the electoral college. But when I went to the Capitol that day, I will tell you, despite the fact that we'd had a few heated conversations on the phone and in person, I never imagined what happened could even occur when they came onto the Senate floor and said,
(51:09):
We need to get you out of the building. I had served in the Capitol for 12 years. I had great respect for the Capitol Hill Police. I figured they'd have things squared away pretty quickly. And I said, we can just wait across the hall in my office. We'll be fine. And then when my wife and daughter who were there joined me in the office, we saw on a little television set in the Vice President's office, people smashing windows, climbing through windows and assaulting police officers. I was asked some days after that if I was scared and said, no, I wasn't scared. I was angry. I was angry seeing that take place at the seat of our national government.
(52:01):
And it also angered me that the people that were doing it were not only dishonoring our capital, but also I thought they dishonor our movement. That in fact, I would say that to the President and a quieter moment a week later that I didn't recognize that the people that were engaged in violence and vandalism, I'd been in front of more Trump rallies, worked more rope lines than I could count in the last four and a half years. And the people in our movement were honest, hardworking, decent oriented, patriotic people that I said would never have done that at the Capitol or anywhere else. And so it did infuriate me. But I will tell you, Mitch, that for me that day, and I give it all to God's grace in that moment, I felt a great sense of resolve settle on me
(53:08):
That while the Secret Service was telling me I need to leave the building, I need to go, I made it clear to them that I was not leaving. I felt a great resolve that I needed to stay. I needed to work the problem and we needed to finish our work. And you did, as I said, by God's grace, I think I'll always believe that when we reconvened the Congress the very same day and we completed the peaceful transfer of power that not just me, but all of us Republicans and Democrats did our duty under the Constitution of the United States.
Mitch Daniels (53:49):
The list of my bad predictions is longer than the list of the correct ones. But I'll tell you, when I got right, people asked me in the runup to that day before any of us could imagine what would happen, what I thought you'd do, I said, the man will do his duty. He always does. Thank you, judge. There was no question in my mind or that of anyone who knows you well, vice President Pence, Mike, you've done a lot of things over time. Make your countless friends around the country, and especially those of us here in your home state, proud but never more so than on that day. You said a great example, people will study it. I hope students will study your resolve and your action on that day for a very long time as we look back on previous profiles in courage across our history. So we thank you, most of all for that. But we certainly thank you for taking time to help us here at the Liberty Fund, help our audience think through these questions and relive these historic moments with you. We hope you'll come back again sometime.
Mike Pence (55:03):
Well, Mitch, number one, it's great to be here at Liberty Fund. Always good to see you, and I'm humbled by your words, but I also, it means a lot coming from you. You're someone who has been a champion of liberty, a champion of state-based innovation, fiscal responsibility. Your book, Keeping the Republic, was ahead of its time, but it's never been more timely. I just look forward to working with you and grateful for your voice, as I believe the day will come. It's, I think of Winston Churchill, who was asked why he never doubted that America would come to the aid of Great Britain in World War II. And he said, A careful study of American history shows that after they've exhausted every other possibility, the American people always do the right thing. We've exhausted a lot of possibilities. Some of us are pretty exhausted, so maybe we're close. We're going to get it turned around. I think so too. I have a sense we are turning it around, and I'm just grateful for your continuing role in that for America.
Mitch Daniels (56:18):
Well, we're the ones who are grateful, and we're grateful to our audience for joining us here and on. We hope many future additions of The Future of Liberty. Thank you.
Outro (56:30):
The Future of Liberty has been brought to you by Liberty Fund, a private educational foundation dedicated to encouraging discussions of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.