Dear Commons Community,

As talk of impeachment grows among Democrats, Senator Al Franken in an interview with the International Business Times, issued a warning that Vice President Mike Pence might be worse than Donald Trump.  Franken characterized Pence as a “zealot” who would be especially harmful to domestic policies.  Here are excerpts from the interview:

“If Donald Trump were impeached, as some Democrats would like, Mike Pence “would be worse” for domestic policy than the current president, U.S. Sen. Al Franken told International Business Times…

One of his party’s highest-profile lawmakers, Franken has pressed law enforcement officials to step up their scrutiny of Trump’s finances and has said “everything points to” collusion between Trump’s team and the Russian government. But he warned that the outcome of impeachment would not be the answer to Democratic dreams.

“Pence ran the transition and some of the very worst nominees, I felt — [EPA chief Scott] Pruitt, [Education Secretary Betsy] DeVos, [HHS Secretary Tom] Price, [Budget director Mick] Mulvaney — were Pence selections, clearly, I think,” Franken told IBT. “He’s ideological, I consider him a zealot, and I think that in terms of a lot of domestic policy certainly would be worse than Trump.”

Franken added that he believes Pence would be better able to manage foreign policy matters.

“If you’re talking about how we handle North Korea or something like that, I’d probably be more comfortable with Pence ultimately making those decisions than Trump, because of Trump’s personality and character,” he said. “I think that [Trump] is so outside the norm in his behavior that that actually does concern me, and it concerns me that I don’t know what he will do if he looks like he’s going to be impeached and he wants to deflect. I don’t know what he’s capable of, and that really does concern me.”

I tend to agree with Franken.  Pence’s record while governor of Indiana was highly dogmatic and ideological.  He also is very close to the religious right and has boasted that he would not have dinner alone with any woman than his wife. There is nothing disrespectful about a committed person having a meal with a friend or colleague who is not the same gender as they are ― unless one is to assume that any interaction not under the watchful eye of a spouse would inevitably lead to infidelity. Is it that men have no self-control in the presence of a woman?  In sum, I think Pence would move this country in a direction that I would rather not go.

We might be between a rock and a hard place.

Tony