Opinion | When Your Enemy Is a Friend to Democracy

I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one… 

That’s Lord Byron kicking off his book-length poem Don Juan, a satiric epic about a philanderer, in 1819. It’s not really part of the English lit curriculum anymore, but the quote has been running through my mind lately, as pundits survey the altered political landscape and ask questions like “Will the Republican-majority Senate roll over and confirm all of Donald Trump’s nominees without a whimper?” or “Will we actually see mass arrests and deportations in the streets?” Or, more generally, “What parts of our system, if any, will hold up, and who will help make that happen?” We want a hero! Or several! Where are they?

To muster even the slightest optimism on these questions, you need to add another that’s even more out of fashion than Byron’s poem. Are there people with whom we have deep political disagreements, and are currently ascendant, who nonetheless share our fundamental beliefs in the system—in democracy, due process, rule of law—and will stand up for them? Is it reasonable to hope for the occasional quiet back-room voice saying, “Um, actually, we can’t do that”? In short, while robust resistance from the outside certainly has a role to play, shouldn’t we also be looking for democracy heroes anywhere we can?

The public conversation isn’t really set up to support this kind of inquiry. The media doesn’t go in for quiet behind-the-scenes heroism (fair enough—it’s behind the scenes) or do much to appreciate and elevate it after the fact. Just consider the deep discomfort and awkwardness with which some people have been trying, apropos of the four-year anniversary of January 6, 2021, to acknowledge the heroism of what Mike Pence did that day. In retrospect, and even at the time, the vice president’s action in upholding certification of the 2020 election was heroic. As The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last put it in a recent column, “In that moment, Pence was the only man in America with the power to stop Trump’s coup…Mike Pence didn’t just refuse to do what Trump demanded of him—he affirmatively worked with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to complete the process that would eject Trump from the presidency. And he did all of this at a moment when his life and the lives of his family members were being threatened and he understood that his actions would end his career in politics.”

And yet, oddly—or not so oddly—Last embeds this ringing affirmation in an agonized column comparing the overall moral stances of Pence and President Joe Biden—who acted admirably over and over but, Last argues, failed to save democracy, while the man with the more objectionable record was the one who ended up protecting it at a key moment. “It’s a uniquely American tragedy,” he concludes. He also calls it “a story that could have been written by Euripides.”

Last’s column stuck in my mind because it was unusually generous—for a lot of people, the statement “Mike Pence is a hero” remains anathema—and yet the author still found it hard to attribute genuine moral accomplishment to someone whose other views he finds so unacceptable. This is actually a familiar stance in a current culture that demands purity in its tribunes. But it won’t set us up very well for what’s coming. If we want heroism in the trenches, in the clutch moments, we’ll need to be ready to embrace it, impurities and all.

After Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human services, I started several fierce arguments among friends by predicting that the greatest thorn in RFK Jr.’s side would be Senator Mitch McConnell, much-reviled longtime Republican majority leader, bane of Democrats and also child polio victim. “Moscow Mitch” isn’t any Democrat’s idea of a hero, but there he was on December 13, issuing a ringing statement, his first on the nomination process: “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed—they’re dangerous. Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”

Heroic gestures from the “wrong” people aren’t the only ones that often get overlooked. When violence involving Israeli soccer fans convulsed Amsterdam in November, there were days and days of feverish commentary, talk of a “pogrom,” dire predictions that the team’s next match, in Paris, might have to be called off. I saw only a passing reference in one story to what happened instead. Not only did the French government refuse to cancel the match—instead adding some 4,000 extra security personnel in and around the stadium—but President Emmanuel Macron insisted on attending in person, bringing two previous presidents and a prime minister with him. His office issued a statement that he was there as “a message of fraternity and solidarity following the intolerable antisemitic acts that followed the match in Amsterdam last week.”

Macron later amplified the point with a statement on X condemning “heinous” antisemitism and vowing to fight it. But it was showing up in person that made the stronger point. If we want heroes, we’ll need to learn to embrace them when they show up. Even when they’re the people we least expect.

Amy E. Schwartz is Moment’s opinion and books editor.