Francis Scott Key Must be Spinning in his Grave

August 23, 2020 Michael Olesker

Vice President Mike Pence: Channeling his inner flag hugger. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images, JTA)

Somewhere in “Songwriters’ Heaven,” high above Fort McHenry where he penned his famous lines about bombs bursting in air, Francis Scott Key must be wondering if his beloved Bawlamer, and the rest of America, can withstand another shelling of the old Locust Point landmark.

Last time, in the midst of the War of 1812, it was only the British bombing Fort McHenry.

This time, it’s Vice President Mike Pence who’s about to commence firing.

This week, as the Republicans stage their video version of a convention designed to give us four more years of Donald Trump, they’re offering us Pence, direct from Fort McHenry, the very place where Key found his inspiration to write the poem that became “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Just as the Democrats last week reminded everyone of America’s vastness by nominating Joe Biden from 57 different locations, the Republicans will now offer a variation, jumping all over the country to imply the wide patriotic support allegedly enjoyed by this president.

And what could be more patriotic than chief presidential sycophant Pence talking to us from the birthplace of our national anthem?

Uh, the above is not a rhetorical question. What, indeed, could be more patriotic?

Here’s a brief answer: It might have been patriotic if, somewhere along the line these past four years, Mike Pence might have stood up to his boss, instead of merely puckering up.

Pence might have stood up just once when Trump was issuing the more than 20,000 lies that have been tabulated since he took office.

Best known for its role in the War of 1812, Fort McHenry protected the Baltimore Harbor from an attack by the British navy. The triumph inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” now known as the “The Star Spangled Banner.” (Provided photo)

He might have stood up just once when Trump tried to kiss off the coronavirus that has now taken more than 175,000 American lives and crushed the U.S. economy. We have 4 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the planet’s afflictions. And Pence, nominally in charge of the task force fighting the virus, routinely doubles down on Trump’s lies.

Pence might have stood up just once when Trump found “good people” on both sides of the divide in Charlottesville.

Or stood up just once when Trump was separating sobbing immigrant children from their distraught parents along America’s southern border.

Or stood up just once when Trump called climate change a hoax, or stood up when Trump had protesters in the streets of Washington gassed so he could stage a photo op with a borrowed bible.

Or stood up just once when more than a dozen women claimed Trump had groped them, or when Trump slipped hush money payments to a couple of women to fix the 2016 election, or when Trump was exposed on the “Access Hollywood” tapes.

Or stood up just once when Trump was bowing and scraping and swapping secrets with Vladmir Putin.

Or stood up just once when …

Ah, you know the list by now.

Four years ago, Trump ran for president understanding something that seems to have eluded all other political insiders.

He knew that voters had lost most of their reverence for politicians – including presidents. This is not Trump’s fault. He didn’t create the cynicism, he’s merely cashed in on it.

And both parties have contributed to the damage.

We can go back to Lyndon Johnson lying about Vietnam, when we first heard the term “credibility gap,” a reference to Johnson’s lies about the war.

Then came Richard Nixon and Watergate, when the cynicism deepened and then cemented into place.

Gerald Ford didn’t help, when he pardoned Nixon without the nation putting him on trial. Ronald Reagan’s phony “trickle-down economics” started the great destruction of the American middle class, and George Bush the elder’s cynical use of the convict Willie Horton cashed in on America’s racial fault line.

Bill Clinton’s pathetic lies about Monica Lewinsky embarrassed the whole country — and then came George W. Bush, first ignoring all warnings about the terrorist attacks that were coming, and then lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to plunge us into endless wars, and then crashing the economy.

So Trump knew, when he decided to run, that America was already cynical about its presidents, and there was a lot of really bad stuff we’d learned to tolerate.

What mattered most was finding the right issue.

And, as Trump might say, “everybody knows” that issue. It extends from questioning Barack Obama’s birth to “Mexican rapists” and bans against Muslims to declaring “good people” among the bigots marching in Charlottesville to his ugly remarks about Baltimore when the late Rep. Elijah Cummings dared to challenge this president to re-tweeting “Democrat cities” should be “left to rot.”

Just watch what Trump does with race this week.

Meanwhile, we’ll have Mike Pence down at Fort McHenry.

We’re accustomed to politicians wrapping themselves in the flag. But this time they’re wrapping themselves in the tattered banner that once inspired an anthem.

Hasn’t that poor old flag suffered enough?

A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age” (Johns Hopkins University Press).