VP Pence Once Held Very Different Beliefs About Adulterers and Liars in the Presidency

Of all the things that trouble me – no, disgust me most about the cancer of Trumpism, it would probably be the wretched hypocrisy.

That’s the hypocrisy of once-principled lawmakers, who have abandoned every stance they once championed, in order to acquiesce to the psychotic, destructive, big government whims of Donald Trump.

It’s also disgust with the hypocrisy of so-called evangelicals, who for years railed against the ungodliness and immorality of presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

When someone with the storied depravity of Donald Trump came along, simply because he ran on the Republican ticket, they happily burned their Bibles on the altar of Baal.

When you want to talk about an example of a spineless, gutless moral coward and hypocrite, think no further than our Vice President Mike Pence.

Pence penned several scathing columns in the 90s, addressing then-President Bill Clinton’s dalliances with White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.

To Pence, that adultery, and then lying about it to the public was enough to have Clinton ran out on a rail.

That would have been fine with me, to be quite honest.

Pence didn’t stop there, however. He took this as an opportunity to get in his pulpit and condemn immorality and lack of integrity in those who would seek the highest office in the land, overall.

Um, what?

Pence wrote the columns in the late 1990s when he was a local Indiana radio host and prominent conservative voice in the state arguing Clinton had lost his moral authority to lead the country. One of the columns, “The Two Schools of Thought on Clinton,” was posted on his now-defunct website for his radio talk show. Another column, “Why Clinton Must Resign or Be Impeached,” was posted on his congressional campaign website. Both columns were archived by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. The columns ran in various Indiana newspapers at the time but did not get national attention.

Dismissing the idea that the president is “just the like the rest of us,” Pence wrote, “If you and I fall into bad moral habits, we can harm our families, our employers and our friends. The President of the United States can incinerate the planet. Seriously, the very idea that we ought to have at or less than the same moral demands placed on the Chief Executive that we place on our next door neighbor is ludicrous and dangerous.

I do not disagree with him.

Further, and with such flair, he added:

“Throughout our history, we have seen the presidency as the repository of all of our highest hopes and ideals and values. To demand less is to do an injustice to the blood that bought our freedoms.”

That’s good stuff, there! What changed? God’s Word certainly didn’t.

I think it’s safe to say that those who shed their blood to buy our freedoms in this land would be horrified if they could see what we did with those freedoms.

Of course, Pence was focused on the fact that Clinton lied about the affair while in office, and there’s where the road parts between Clinton and his old friend, Donald Trump.

Trump’s adulteries all happened outside of his presidency.

Still, if part of the problem is the lying, Trump has done plenty of that since taking office.

In one of his columns about Clinton, Pence wrote, “Further, the Presidents (sic) repeated lies to the American people in this matter compound the case against him as they demonstrate his failure to protect the institution of the presidency as the ‘inspiring supreme symbol of all that is highest in our American ideals.'”

He continued, “Leaders affect the lives of families far beyond their own ‘private life’. In the Bible story of Esther we are told of a king who was charged to put right his own household because there would be ‘no end of disrespect and discord’ among the families of the kingdom if he failed to do so. In a day when reckless extramarital sexual activity is manifesting itself in our staggering rates of illegitimacy and divorce, now more than ever, America needs to be able to look to her First Family as role models of all that we have been and can be again.”

Sadly, there are those who are looking at Trump as a role model, and their behavior because of it is atrocious.

Pence went on to make the case for Republicans to move to boot Bill Clinton from office, even if it resulted in their losing the majority in Congress.

Imagine that.

“If our leaders flinch at this responsibility, they would do well to heed the Proverb ‘if a ruler listens to lies, all his officials become wicked,'” he added. “Our leaders must either act to restore the luster and dignity of the institution of the Presidency or we can be certain that this is only the beginning of an even more difficult time for our land. For the nation to move on, the President must move out.”

That’s next-level hypocrisy.

Or maybe Pence just had a change of heart – and a change of faith.