If you ask Mike Pence how he’s doing on any given day, he claims his usual response is “Never better.” But perhaps he would agree with outside observers that when it comes to assessing any given year in his career, perhaps 2023 was not his best yet. After years of campaigning and finally getting bold enough to distance himself from President Trump, he found himself polling so far behind the leading pack of contenders for the Republican nomination—and, particularly, very far behind Trump himself—that he had no choice but withdraw from the race in October, thereby essaying to preserve the tattered remains of his dignity.
Awkwardly enough, timed originally with an eye for better outcomes than those that materialized, his most recent book appeared in November 2023, co-written with his daughter Charlotte Pence Bond: Go Home for Dinner: Advice on How Faith Makes a Family and Family Makes a Life. To be honest, perhaps it is because he was no longer in the race at that point, that I did not even hear that this book appeared in November. Perhaps you didn’t either. But after coming across it in the public library, I read it, so you don’t have to.
It is memoir-ish, yet it is not exactly a memoir. Rather, this is an advice book on how to live while placing God and family first. It all begins, Pence says, by going home for dinner each day. Each of the short and snappy chapters offers useful advice, supported in brief with some anecdotes from his family life: “Be a Parent Who Listens,” “Fulfill Your Purpose,” “Embrace Faith,” “Follow Your Peace”—you get the idea. A Bible verse at the beginning of each chapter reminds yet again that Pence’s faith is very important to him.
I was expecting, given Pence’s most prominent role in his political career—as Trump’s Vice President—that he would say something—anything!—about President Trump. Instead, in the only chapter in the book expressly marked as written by his daughter Charlotte Pence Bond, “Stay,” we get a hagiographic account of the events of January 6, 2021—with Pence as the calm, thoughtful, saintly hero of the day. In this account, he is the one who, when pressured and threatened, stood firm. He stayed.
Indeed, the Bible verse selected to headline this particular chapter is Ephesians 6:13—“Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” Very subtle.
The book is well written, from a mechanical standpoint. Superb grammar, articulate sentences, good use of vocabulary that is sophisticated but not over the top. One cannot argue with the content either: yes, we would all be happier if we placed God first in our lives, if we prioritized family over the industrial treadmill, if we treasured our children, if we went home for dinner each night instead of embracing the modern culture of extreme workaholism.
And yet, at the end, I found myself wondering if this is what it would feel like if AI wrote a memoir.
We have all seen some AI-generated images of late—you see a painting that is brushed up to an extreme degree, so it is just completely perfect, from the lighting to the objects and setting to the immaculate hair placement on the subjects’ heads to their beatific facial expressions. Something just feels off, even if you can’t quite put a finger on it. When you look at an AI-generated image, you just know. The same sensation plagued me while reading this book. It includes all the correct words, all the correct thoughts, and I could point to nothing in the book that I would necessarily dispute. There was nothing to rankle, offend, disappoint. Yet it just felt off—too perfect, too polished, and ultimately lacking any sign of authentic humanity.
There is theological instinct to this realization, I contend. It is raw, messy, and imperfect stories that draw us in and convict us with their authenticity. The genre of the politician’s memoir, too often, is not it, however. If you write a book with the express aim of winning votes, this is what it looks like—and, of course, since it came out too late to help Pence’s campaign, it didn’t even matter.
How we tell our stories matters, but so does why we tell them. Writing with desperate love for elected office in mind instead of love of others perhaps just wasn’t a good reason for writing a book.
You are a brave person, indeed.