“Give Mike Pence credit for one thing. That he and Trump’s administration failed the country in their response to the coronavirus, but that his public vaccination on Friday (December 18, 2020) was a good thing for all of us. Liberals, stay with me on this.” — Elliot Williams.
Yes! I stay and stand with Elliot Williams on this one. I am a pragmatist, a liberal Democrat, and a realist. Williams’s writing sums up this piece and the mystery question on Pence in the chaotic orbit of trumpism. How those in the cocoon of trumpism sleep at night remains a puzzle to this writer and those who have a good sense of discernment!
With no equivocation, I am one of those who acknowledge the extemporaneous speeches and gravitas of the US Vice President, Mike Pence. Listening to Pence talks always reminds me of a friend who is also the former Mr. Malcolm Fabiyi (now an American Ph.D. Holder). Dr. Malcolm Fabiyi was the prodigious University of Lagos—Unilag’s Student Union President in my university days. Mike Pence’s eloquence almost clunked our election fever and eagerness during his debate with Senator Kamala Harris. Pence has a good command of the English language. Vice President Pence’s extraneous disposition to trumpism and conspiracy theories is a mystery to students of oration and articulation.
In a real-life situation, If not polluted, Pence’s demeanor can sway excellent and intelligent people to his side in any plebiscite. But the dude’s first-rated character has been obsequiously sucked up to the outgoing mendacious and loquacious Potus. Seriously, one thing that rattles my cognition is when unintelligent people use intelligent and well-educated people for their whims and caprices or as a weapon for their political agenda. As ordinary and straightforward as I am, those who know this writer will tell you he will never be a lilliputian to a small mind or dwarfed mind. As a Machiavellian school student, I think reading “The Prince,” authored by Niccolò Machiavelli, can partially satisfy one’s insatiable quest for Pence’s romanticism with trumpism. “The Prince” is an exciting read, a 16th-century political treatise written by the Italian diplomat and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. The Prince is a compendium monograph that has guided stealthy and sly leaders worldwide, including our own Babangida of Nigeria.
The mind is a terrible thing to waste. In retrospection, I ruminate over the intelligent people who have been victims or used in Machiavellian ways in politics and business. My unsolicited empathy usually goes for their families, hard-earned careers, and professional life and future. Mike Pence would have been a golden boy of the Republican party. Still, his hyped evangelical credential, political leverage, and carriage seem to have been hijacked and made impotent by trumpism and the US “retrumplicans.” The last four years have depicted Mike Pence as an obedient statuette and wimpy boy to an unusual and unprecedented President the US has had in recent history. The outgoing Vice President is another topic for research students on how not to squander outstanding credentials for narcissistic leaders and their political minions.
Moreover, the pandemic ravaged 2020 has been a year the world will not forget in a hurry. It was also a year the current Potus should have leveraged and boosted his reelection chances for a second term. You cannot give what you do not have; neither can you have what you either ignorantly or arrogantly refuse to get from those who are well-informed and smarter than you. Mike Pence’s boss is not ductile (i.e., not capable of being molded or shaped responsibly), and he is a person who acts as though he knows everything and who diminishes the opinions, comments, and suggestions of others. Every name he calls his opponents is the exact name he innately possesses. His enemies are the antithesis of everything about him.
In all of this, this is the tragedy of the last four years in the US and the consequences of Potus’s humiliating election’s defeat in the November 8, 2020, general election. In a jiffy, Mike Pence’s ace approach and novel leadership example at his recent public vaccination seem to have neutralized the macabre dense of the last four years with POTUS. For example, Pence’s power may save some people who are in a state of blissful ignorance to take the vaccines against lethal coronavirus. Vice President Mike Pence has shown one of the political weapons he can use to race favorably into his political future—if he really has one in mind.
