It’s time for me to admit something.
I was willing to give former Vice President Mike Pence the benefit of ample doubt over his role in the 1/6 insurrection launched on Capitol Hill by the riotous mob of domestic terrorists.
They stormed the Capitol Building, some of whom were yelling “Hang Mike Pence!” Why did they want to string him up? Because he was doing his constitutional duty by presiding over the certification of the Electoral College totals from the 2020 presidential election.
He resisted POTUS 45’s demand for him to “overturn” the results. Good for the veep, I thought, and said so out loud.
Now comes this bit of news from a book just released by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, authors of “Peril”: Pence had to be persuaded that there was nothing he could do to overturn the results.
The persuader? His pal and fellow Indiana resident former VP Dan Quayle, the guy who once was a laughingstock because he once misspelled “potato” in front of elementary school students.
Quayle told his VPOTUS successor that there was nothing he could. Pence reportedly asked for guidance, sought a clue as to how he could rig the election result to produce a victory for himself and the guy who was running for re-election as POTUS.
Dan Quayle has emerged as the unsung hero of that hideous insurrection.
Quayle had danced to that tune already, in January 1993, as he presided over an Electoral College certification after he and President George H.W. Bush lost their re-election bid in a fight against Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
That GOP team, though, did it right. President Bush and Vice President Quayle both accepted their defeat. They presided over a seamless transition and then faded away, stepping out of the limelight.
If only POTUS 45 would learn … if only.
As for Mike Pence, Woodward and Costa have revealed him to be what many of us knew all along: He was the No. 1 sycophant to a twice-impeached POTUS.