mike pence? full disclosure: i served as head of the super pac seeking to draft pence into the 2012 presidential race. having long been persuaded of pence<u+2019>s superior leadership qualities, i<u+2019>m even less objective than usual.









we called pence <u+201c>the conservative champion<u+201d> and for good reason. then, in 2012, pence made the right decision: to run for governor of indiana. that was an opportunity for distinguished public service. as it happened, it was also a perfect boot camp for the vice presidency.









the honorable david mcintosh, now president of the powerful club for growth, was the one who encouraged pence to come back into electoral politics. mcintosh later served as the guru of the draft pence for president super pac. in my recent exclusive interview mcintosh recalled:









when i was vacating my congressional seat to pursue an ultimately unsuccessful gubernatorial run, in 2000, i wanted my seat to be occupied by a true conservative and someone of high integrity and commitment to public service.<u+00a0> i turned to mike pence. he had run unsuccessfully in 1988 and 1990 and by 2000 had achieved considerable success, and affluence, as a syndicated talk radio host. mike replied that he no longer aspired to public office but would, together with his wife karen, pray on my request and determine whether they sensed a calling. several months later i encountered mike at the indiana state fair. i asked him about whether he had reached a conclusion. he replied that he and karen recognized that he could not shirk the duty. pence went on to run, and win, and serve america with distinction in the congress and then to serve splendidly as governor of indiana. if elected to the vice presidency he will again serve america magnificently.









one of the reasons that pence showed himself extraordinary may have faded from general memory. it has not faded from mine. nor has it been forgotten, or forgiven, by the left, who are now highlighting this, much to my delight. in 2010 pence gave a major speech at the detroit economic club. as the center-left thinkprogress.org then reported:









the first item of pence<u+2019>s five-point for the economy is a <u+201c>sound monetary policy.<u+201d> pence elaborated that he believes a return to the gold standard could create such a policy: pence: before i move on, i<u+2019>d like to note, in the midst of all that<u+2019>s happened recently <u+2014> massive borrowing and spending, qe2 <u+2014> a debate has started anew over an anchor to our global monetary system. my dear friend, the late jack kemp, probably would have urged me to adopt the gold standard, right here and now in detroit. robert zoellick, the president of the world bank, encouraged that we rethink the international currency system including the role of gold, and i agree. i think the time has come to have a debate over gold, and the proper role it should play in our nations monetary affairs. a pro-growth agenda begins with sound monetary policy.<u+00a0> (emphasis supplied by thinkprogress.)









the elitist left is misguidedly neurotic about the gold standard. properly designed the gold standard favors labor and debtors slightly over capital and creditors and hence carries majority rank and file support among the labor and ethnic left. timothy b. lee wrote at the elite left vox on july 15th, trump should ignore his running mate<u+2019>s bad ideas about monetary policy, with reference to the same speech:









it is perverse how the left has reviled friedman when he was, as he most often was, right, while being deferential to him when he was demonstrably wrong. the international gold standard had ceased operations in 1914. in 1922, it was replaced, in the immortal words of the great french economist jacques rueff, by a <u+201c>grotesque caricature.<u+201d>









the economist described that system, quite correctly, as <u+201c>a mess.<u+201d> it called itself a gold standard without playing by the rules of the gold standard. the interwar so-called "gold standard" was a hybrid between jabberwocky and calvinball. the true gold standard was<u+00a0> but a dim memory by the onset of the great depression for which it was framed. the misguided fixation of <u+201c>many economists<u+201d> <u+2013> deluded by the eichengreen fallacy -- on the role of <u+201c>the<u+201d> gold standard in worsening the great depression is contradicted by history.









conservative apostate david frum, writing in the wall street journal, also stubbornly continues to misunderstand the gold standard. frum does however astutely observe some similarities between william jennings bryan and donald trump:









this is a similarity previously noted by david klinghard in us news and world report and by tim reuter at forbes.com. it is apt in some ways but not in others.<u+00a0> bryan, by prescribing depreciation through "free coinage of silver," lost three presidential races. trump provides a counsel of general prosperity and has thus far gone from victory to victory and is on track to astound the frums of this world in the general election.









it is disappointing that the erudite but curiously tone-deaf frum fails to note that the ravaging of small farmers was caused by the post-civil war restoration of the gold standard at pre-war parity. this forced a painful secular deflation. we are back in the jaws of deflation, this time fed-induced. trump twice has stated his appreciation for the gold standard, the very platform on which mckinley soundly beat bryan. and the gold standard, properly done, is not an instrument of deflation.









paul krugman and his "plovers" will rave on against the gold standard. let them. to adapt a tweet by neo-keynesian economist austan goolsbee: roses are red. violets are pink. don<u+2019>t listen to aurophobes. no one cares what they think. to wit:
picking mike pence really was a grand slam for donald trump
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