Book Review: Piety & Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House

 With the recent Vice Presidential debate, as well as the President's COVID diagnosis, I thought it worthwhile to revisit a book that came out around this time last year called Piety and Power. 

Tom LoBianco has followed Mike Pence as long as any journalist on the planet.  He is about as much of an expert on Pence as one will find.

Since Pence did not appear much in Michael Wolff's treatment of Jarvanka and Bannon in Fire and Fury, one may wonder his role.  This book does much in providing that insight, and more importantly, the VP's background.

The title is well selected.  Pence's religious conviction is a real thing.  Some of the things we saw this week in the debate are apparent from this reading of Pence.  He does have charisma and plays the role of politician quite well.

On the other hand, he has a great deal of ambition, and it would seem his ultimate goal is the White House.  My reading of this is that he has sometimes chosen inaction as a way to be acceptable by the largest group of people possible.  Even the reputation he gained from signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act seemed to spiral out of that.

However, no doubt, it worked.  Predecessor Mitch Daniels (and so many other ambitious Governors) seemed destined for the highest office, but did not succeed near as far as down that road as Pence.  

There is certainly a relationship of his theory of "let God handle it" in his selection as Trump's running mate, but I don't want to spoil it.

In that spirit, let me just say, political-minded readers will want to read this for insightful (and sometimes early) cameos from Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, Rush Limbaugh, John Boehner and many others.

The book ends (and surely continues) with Pence's two sides in direct competition, and trying not to rock the boat to get to his ultimate goal.

I highly recommend this to all readers of political biographies and non-fiction.  It would be a nice addition to a shelf that contains the various Administration-related books.  Like so many of those books, this is incredibly readable.  However, a lot of the high profile Trump books seemed as if rushed to press.  Not LoBianco's book which is clearly a product of much research 

I would also add, like those books, I would suspect the people most likely to pick this up are left-leaning readers, but I think anyone interested in Pence, even ardent supporters would find this an interesting read based on the insight of the man's life, the author's largely even-handed treatment and the dearth of similar books on the subject.