Vice President Mike Pence

Andrew Kaufmann: Presidential centers are usually built to preserve history, but at this presidential center we also discuss — and try to solve — important issues in the present. And one of the great things about being at this presidential center is that we get to hear not just from the administration of the person whose name is on this building, George W. Bush, but also other administrations. And so, uh, today we’re honored to have the 48th Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence. Vice President Pence, thank you so much for being here.

Vice President Pence: Thank you. I’m honored. I’m a great admirer and humbled to call President George W. Bush a friend. And just really appreciate the extraordinary work that you do here, at the George W. Bush Library. And I don’t know if you all were already here, but I just want to thank you for joining us today. It’s a, it’s a great joy to be back to this historic place, and it’s always a good day to be in Texas.

Thank you all.

Andrew Kaufmann: And co-hosting this — and really leading the way as our new leader — Shilo Brooks, the president and CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. Shilo, thank you for lending us your expertise. Take it away, sir.

Shilo Brooks: Absolutely. It’s an honor to have you here. Thank you for being here. It means a lot to us.

Vice President Pence: Thank you, Shilo. It’s my honor.

Shilo Brooks: So we are sitting on a college campus, — SMU — a beautiful, ascending university, where students young and old meet, with goodwill and charity, to pursue the truth together in an age of disagreement. But they do that in a civil way with civil discourse.

But the most recent act of political violence occurred on a college campus, to Charlie Kirk. That’s not the only one in our recent history. It’s the latest in a string of political violence. There’s been Melissa and Mark Hortman at Minnesota. Paul Pelosi. Even President Trump. And so I was wondering if you might take a moment to give us some of your thoughts about how as a nation we could begin to heal.

Vice President Pence: Well, Shilo, thank you for the thoughtful question and congratulations on your new role, coming here from Princeton. Let me be among those saying, welcome to Texas.

Shilo Brooks: Thank you.

Andrew Kaufmann: Here, here.

Shilo Brooks: Welcome back home. I’m a Texan by birth.

Vice President Pence: I already sensed that about you. You know, the Bible says that we’re to mourn with those who mourn and grieve with those who grieve. And, speaking on behalf of the overwhelming majority of these people in the country, I’m heartsick about what happened to Charlie Kirk.

Charlie was a good and godly man who dedicated himself to the freedom of expression. To free and open debate. He traveled to places like this great storied campus and engaged in an open and civil dialogue about the issues facing the country, and he ultimately died defending that principle. I really do believe that it’s important going forward, that part of Charlie Kirk’s legacy is that we are going to continue to stand for free and open debate and for the first [amendment] rights of every American.

Now, that being said. The anger that people feel and in some cases, the fear that people feel in moments like this… you naturally wanna find someone to blame. But, I’d say, two principles:

Number one. I’m someone that believes in personal responsibility. And absent additional facts coming out in the investigation, there was one person responsible for the assassination to Charlie Kirk, and that man needs to be met with a swift and certain justice for his actions.

Secondly, with regard to political discourse broadly, I’m somebody that has long believed that democracy depends on heavy doses of civility. And that how we talk about what we believe, how we talk about what others may believe at odds with that, is important.

But with the rising tide of political violence that you are referred to, some of which we’ve seen in the news: the two attempted assassination attempts on, on President Trump, the murder of the former speaker of the Minnesota House, the attack on the governor of Pennsylvania, and frankly, the violence I witnessed firsthand four years ago, created an understandable concern. And so I do hope that — particularly people in leadership roles — will seize on this moment. To think carefully about how we speak about one another and to one another. Because we have great challenges facing this country at home and abroad, and it’s important that we find a way to listen to one another better. And find a way to achieve principled progress and compromise together.

All of that being said, I, I would say to you ultimately — I love the end of your question — which was, how do we heal our country?

And my deepest conviction is that the challenge facing America today is not a political one. It’s a moral one. And that in a very real sense, if we’re to heal our land, it will begin by turning our hearts back to the one that the American people have always turned to in times of trial.

Remember, this country was founded on the principle that we believe we were endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, and it’s still at the heart of the American experiment. And so when I think of these divided times, contentious times, the obligations of leaders, the requirements of justice… I fall back on that ancient promise that maybe we can all cling to today that says that if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways, and I’ll hear from heaven and heal their land. I truly do believe we’ll turn our hearts back to God. If we’ll pray for one another, pray for our countrymen, and pray for America. The best days for the greatest nation on Earth are yet to come. So help us God.

Andrew Kaufmann: Well said, sir. You mentioned at home and abroad… we could spend two hours just talking about the home front, but we at the Bush Center firmly believe that what happens abroad really matters too. And so, you know, we love PEPFAR — here’s a great example of the power of partnership and of being a leader in the world. But there’s a lot of debate about this now. Where do you fall on this issue and how can we make sure that Americans continue to see this value?

Vice President Pence: Well, I learned a lot traveling around the world as your vice president and a little bit in other roles. Back when I was governor of Indiana, we did some international travel and I was on the International Relations Committee for years during the Bush Administration, and I’ve always believed that America’s the leader of the free world.

But what I learned traveling in those various roles, particularly my last job, was that if America’s not leading the free world, the free world’s not being led. There’s no B team for the free world. And so I think American leadership is absolutely indispensable.

And it’s the reason why, when it comes to hard power, it’s the reason why I strongly support our national defense. I’m a little biased. My son’s a major in the United States Marine Corps, and, one of my unworthy son-in-laws is a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy.

My son is deployed right now in the Asia Pacific, and Henry will be shipping out in just a couple of months. And so strong national defense is the bulwark. And I want to say that during President Bush’s years, we built up our military. And of course, Bush, for me will always be remembered for time immemorial in the way that he marshaled the resources of our nation in the wake of that unspeakable attack of September the 11th — the 24th anniversary of which we marked just last week — he led with courage and with conviction, but he invested in American leadership in the world, standing with our allies, standing up to our enemies.

But then there’s the issue of soft power, as it gets called. PEPFAR, to me, when I think of the Bush Administration, when I think of President Bush’s record and accomplishments, the support that the American people provided to end the AIDS pandemic in Africa, is I think one of the singular greatest humanitarian efforts in the history of the world.

President George W. Bush, with the support of the Congress and the American people, literally saved millions of lives in a pandemic that literally would’ve decimated the continent of Africa. I’m proud to say that I played a tiny role in that because, you know, people who know me well, know I’m a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican — in that order. I was on the International Relations Committee at the time, and as you can imagine, the politics of abortion funding were immediately implicated when PEPFAR was being debated. But working across the aisle, working with leaders like the late Chuck Colson, we forged language in that bill that we could assure the American people that PEPFAR would not fund or promote abortion on the continent of Africa.

And we were able on that basis to move it forward. And so I’m, to me, that was a tremendous example of American leadership in the category of soft power. It’s greatly to the president’s credit. But also I can tell you to this day has generated goodwill for the American people, and not only across Africa, but across the world.

So that’s the combination for me. Be strong, [lead], recognize America as the leader of the free world, but then also, be prepared to marshal. Marshal the resources of the most prosperous nation on earth to confront the challenges facing mankind and allies around the world.

Shilo Brooks: I want to talk to you about the role of the vice presidency and your approach to it. That’s a role throughout history that is often shaped by the occupant who holds it, and there are very different approaches to it. And so what I wanted to ask you was to tell us a little bit about your approach to the vice presidency, how you went about thinking about your job at that time, and also to ask you whether there were other vice presidents in history who you looked up to and modeled your own conduct after?

Vice President Pence: Well, in my office in the West Wing, I had portraits of the first two vice presidents, which were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. And John Adams, I think, is still my favorite vice president. He went on, he had another job, but as our very first vice president under George Washington, he was a driving force behind the founding of our country, and a great source of inspiration to me personally.

I will tell you that I know we’re in the George W. Bush Library, but Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush was always an inspiration to me — as a vice president. He would go on to be a great and accomplished president. But, when I looked at, in the course of my lifetime, at people who had served in this role — including another Hoosier named Dan Quayle, who’s a very dear friend of mine — it seemed that, for George Herbert Walker Bush, there was this bigger than life character that came to Washington D.C., who turned to someone who had a great deal of experience in the Congress and in the Republican Party. And, I don’t know why I was drawn to that analogy, but, in a very real sense, when I think of the accomplishments of the Reagan Administration, I see them as shared accomplishments because it was a team that worked together.

And I want to be very clear, our administration didn’t end the way I wanted it to, but I’m incredibly proud of the record of the Trump-Pence administration. And serving as Donald Trump’s vice president was the greatest honor of my life. And I want to thank all of you for the privilege of serving in that role.

How I thought about the vice presidency was greatly shaped by those examples, but it was also greatly shaped by the fact that I was a governor. And I had had a lieutenant governor, right? Which is very… it’s a very different thing when… and there’s a big jump between those two positions.

I can tell you now, I was a Congressman before that, but I would always tell people that when you’re a legislator, you just have to get up every day and be right about your own opinion. When a chief executive, you actually have to take your principles and figure out what the most right outcome that you can achieve is. That’s what leadership is. And for all of you that have aspired to leadership, the young people here and others… it’s a different thing. But having someone elected alongside me as my lieutenant governor, I had a very clear idea of what I wanted from that role. And also candidly, what I didn’t want from that role, and it greatly shaped my approach to the vice presidency.

And I tried to approach the role with President Trump with those principles into practice. I really did. One of my predecessors, Walter Mondale, wrote an essay that I read during the transition in 2016. He said, “you need to remember that everybody that comes into the Oval Office is looking for something. They’re looking for the president to sign a bill, to veto a bill. They’re looking for the president to support a program, oppose a program.” And he essentially said, “it cannot be like that with the vice president. You cannot be just one more person in the Oval Office trying to persuade the president.” And then he wrote words that I’ll never forget.

He said, “the vice president owes the president his opinion once and in private.” The vice president owes the president his opinion once and in private. And so for me, I can count on one hand the number of times I ever expressed an opinion on an issue where the president had not announced his decision, in the presence of anyone else.

And there were times that President Trump insisted that I did. The cabinet meeting, which, the president was trying to decide whether to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem. I was the last person to speak at the cabinet meeting and he said, “Mike, tell ’em what you think.” And I told him, “Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel. Embassies are in every other nation’s capital on the planet, Mr. President. More important than that, it’s what you said you were gonna do.” And the President said, “Well, that’s right.” But other than that, I always kept my opinion to myself. In fact, you can read about my approach to the job in my autobiography, which some of you have. It’s entitled, So Help Me, God. It’s available on amazon.com and we’re all good books are sold.

Andrew Kaufmann: And, and also at the Bush Center’s bookstore, by the way.

Vice President Pence: Love it. But I try to be very intentional about the role. And the last piece of it was just understanding that my job was to help Donald Trump be successful in the presidency that he was elected to advance. I signed onto the ticket. I’m a lifelong conservative. I believe that we were running on a conservative agenda and ultimately we governed on a conservative agenda. But I always believed that it was my job to help the president be successful. And I believe we were.

And as I said, I’ll always be grateful to have served as President Donald Trump’s vice president and consider it the greatest honor of my life.

Andrew Kaufmann: You mentioned leadership and future leaders. And we’re recording this in front of a room of people. Over there on to your left are a couple of young men, what would you say to them to encourage them that public service, which is where you’ve spent the majority of your career, is a worthwhile endeavor?

Vice President Pence: Well first I would say to you public service is an honorable profession, and for me it was a calling. I grew up in a family that ran gas stations in a small town in Indiana. My father had no use for lawyers or politicians, so you can imagine what a great source of pride I was to him in my life.

But from early on in my life, my heroes were President John F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They fired my imagination. I told a friend in Dallas earlier today, I started in politics as a Democrat — as Youth Democrat party coordinator in Columbus, Indiana in 1975.

But then I started to hear the voice of of Ronald Reagan. I started to hear those ideals of a strong defense, of limited constitutional government, of fiscal responsibility, of the right to life, traditional values.

And I joined the Reagan revolution and never looked back. And I would say — as anybody that knows my story — I had stops and starts.

I tried my hand at politics a couple of times. Learned some hard lessons. Would take me every bit of 20 years involved in politics before I got elected to anything. But the journey has been a privilege for me.

And my best advice to young people is there’s a little bit of a myth that, I don’t know if it’s from the movies or whatever, that people, people grow up thinking that there’s gonna come a time in your life when somebody calls you and asks you to run for office, right? I don’t know where it came from, but it actually doesn’t happen very often. I’m not saying it never happens. So my first rule of thumb for young people is first, first and foremost: decide what it is you believe about the world and go show up at the headquarters of the local party that’s about those things.

Now, for me, that’s conservative Republican, informed greatly by my Christian values. But the first thing to do is look in here [points to heart], decide what you’re about, and then go find a party. Go find candidates who are most aligned with that, and just go to work. I’ll never forget when I decided to become a Republican.

I walked into the county headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana, and I went to meet with the county chairman who was a legendary Republican County chairman. He looked for all the world like Jabba the Hut in the Star Wars movies. He’s a big man sitting behind a big desk. And I walked up to him and I said, I said, uh … he said, “how can I help you, son?”

And I said, “Um, I’m Mike Pence and I’m here to join the Republican party.”

And just held his hand up, shook my hand, and, and he said to me, well, it’s not something in Indiana you really join. I mean, he said, “we don’t have voter registration like that.” I mean, you don’t have to declare your party.

But he said, “glad to have you.” I obviously thought it was a big deal. He had a different opinion. But I went to work. I was a precinct committeeman. In my neighborhood, within just a couple of months, I, I found myself just working in the trenches of local politics and getting to know people.

And I will make you a promise to these bright young people who are seated here. If you show up and you bring your character and your caliber into the equation, you’ll get the call.

Trust me.

But you gotta show up first. You gotta show people that I’m willing to roll my sleeves up and do the work of politics, which I know you think it’s cable television and you think it’s TV commercials and you think it’s the big… actually politics is precinct by precinct. It’s out with people.

It’s having the character and the personality to generate confidence for people. Trust.

And people follow people that they trust. And so once you’ve demonstrated that, I guarantee you the opportunities will come. I was 28 years old sitting at lunch after I’d been involved in a local party for a few years, and a friend looked at me, Shilo, and said, “so what do you? What are you in this for? What do you want to do?”

And I said, kind of nervously. I said, “Well, you know, my dream is to be the congressman for my hometown someday.” That’s my goal. Thinking that that’s something that would come in my forties or fifties or sixties. And, and he looked at me and said, “Well, we don’t really have a good candidate in your district next year. You wanna run?”

It happened. Just that simple. And so, the first rule is… is show up.

But the last piece of advice I’d give to young people and anyone listening to this podcast is take this time in your life to develop the qualities of the inner man and the inner woman that are gonna serve you when those doors of leadership open for you. Because when you go into public life, if you don’t have that center, which for me is grounded in faith. It’s grounded in an understanding of American history. It’s the constitution, grounded in the principles that have always made this country strong and prosperous and free. If you don’t have that, you’ll find yourself in a very short period of time being a part of policies that may not fire your imagination. You’ll find yourself, being kind of… going along as opposed to leading. And there’s a difference between the two things. And so I tell you to take this time in your life, to prepare, to prepare, to meet that moment when it comes. ’cause you don’t know when it’ll come.

And it might be… you might get elected to Congress in just a couple of years.

And a time of testing may come for you where someone says, “I want you to vote this way. We need you to vote this way.” And there’s some pressure, sometimes a lot of peer pressure. For me, when I was campaigning my first campaign, I said, “Well, my goal is to just do what I told people I would do if I ever got here.” Took me 12 years to get elected to Congress.

And so I wanted to let my yes be yes and my no be no. But what enabled me to do that in every sense was the grace of God, a wife who knew me and loved me and knew why we’d done this. A supportive family, a team around me that shared those values and the times that we were able to stand in the pocket and keep our word were informed by that.

For the young people, last thought. You know, there’s a little bit of a rumor going around in your generation that adversity creates character. The way my kids say it is that, you know, “whatever doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger,” right? You’ve heard that. Well, my view is whatever doesn’t kill you just didn’t kill you. It didn’t make you stronger. You just survived. I mean, the truth is, adversity doesn’t create character. Adversity reveals character, and if you choose leadership, if you choose public service, when your time of testing comes, you are going to be that man or woman that you have been preparing to be in every quiet moment before that.

And so that’s what I encourage you to do. Show up, take time to think about what your convictions are, but then draw on those sources in your life. For me, it all begins with my faith. Draw on those sources in your life that’ll build a solid foundation around that ’cause, lastly, we need you.

If there was ever a time that America needed more men and women of principle and conviction and integrity and humility in the public square, it’s now. And so I hope you take that to heart and I’ll see you at the top.

Andrew Kaufmann: By the way, when you said that you were looking at Olivia, and I think she would make a fantastic congresswoman, for the record. [Laughter.]

Shilo Brooks: So, I gotta congratulate you. I hear you’re getting a promotion from former governor and former vice president to the academic ranks of professor. So from one professor to another, welcome to your promotion. You’re a natural, I can already tell.

Bbut I wanted to ask you, why did you choose to become a teacher and what excites you about that? And what are you going to teach and how are you gonna teach it?

Vice President Pence: Well, I had my first crack at teaching last year at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, a great Christian college. And, I think using the term professor as applied to Mike Pence… it’s a bit of a stretch, to be honest with you. I mostly… I co-taught, I co-taught the course, tried to bring my life and experience into a course on faith and politics. We’ll do that again there. But, I was very honored. George Mason University approached me about speaking on campus this year and ultimately teaching a course on the Constitution, which I’m going to do with a brilliant attorney who was my general counsel at the White House.

And for me, from the time I left the White House, I’ve been traveling to campuses just like this one around the country. It’s one of the reasons why I find the late Charlie Kirk’s example so inspiring — because I’ve spoken at events large and small at campuses because I honestly believe those of us that have had the privilege to lead need to be available to the rising generation. And also need to ensure that institutions of higher education are truly open to all viewpoints. That hasn’t been true in recent memory on many campuses around the country. Not speaking about this one at all, but on many campuses, that traditional conservative viewpoints were excluded. And thanks to my late friend’s work, and I hope a little bit of what we’ve done, and groups like Young America’s Foundation, that I think has begun to change.

I believe that the expectation of the American people of the current administration to make sure the campuses are have a wide ranging number of viewpoints is important. And so I’ve just felt a great, not just a privilege, but an obligation to go and bring my brand of conservatism into the classroom and onto campuses.

You know, I, I often tell people I’m a conservative, but I’m not in a bad mood about it. [Laughter.] And for too many in an academic setting, there’s that particular view of conservatism. And it’s frankly one of the things sitting here in the George W. Bush Library that I’ve always admired so much about President Bush. Not only his faith, but his humility and his humor. And I think the more that we can share who we really are, the more openness there’ll be. People thinking about these timeless principles that we call them conservative now, but it’s only because we’re conserving what the overwhelming number of majority Americans have always believed.

We’re talking about the ideals on which the country was founded, ideals of life and liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Ideals of limited government and providing for the common defense. And I’m very privileged to be able to do it.

Andrew Kaufmann: Vice President Pence, this has been a real honor. Thank you so much for spending this time with us here. Let’s hear it for Vice President Pence. [Applause.]

Vice President Pence: Thank you all. It’s an honor to be here. Thanks everybody.