The 2nd battle of Fort McHenry

A long line of testimonials paved the gold brick road that ended with Vice President Mike Pence accepting nomination for another term, and then launched into a list of his boss’ accomplishments.

And guess what? After Pence’s speech, out walked Donald J. Trump and  Melania.

No surprise, Pence didn’t seem to mnd. He is as loyal as a pretzel is round.

Big surprise, Trump didn’t commandeer the microphone.

Pence spoke at Baltimore’s Fort McHenry, where American defenders held off the mighty British Navy in 1814, after British ground forces had burned Washington, D.C., which they referred to as the Swamp.

[Editor’s note: The British did not call it the Swamp.]

It was also the battle that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the song that became our national anthem. Pence quoted the closing lines of the first stanza to note that then, and now, the star spangled banner waves o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

He did not quote from the third stanza, which mentions catching slaves.

Pence was once a radio host, so he knows how to speak clearly and concisely, and he was a great salesman for his boss. I am including many of the achievements, but not the ones that seemed patently false.

Trump rebuilt the military, reformed the V.A., zoomed the economy, destroyed the ISIS caliphate, killed a couple of Islamic terrorists, tried to weaken abortion rights, appointed conservative judges, created a Space Force, rewrote NAFTA, pulled out of the Iran deal and the climate conference, moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, among others.

You don’t have to agree with these policies. You have to admit he kept these promises.

(In case you are wondering, I’ve deleted Pence’s remarks on how well the president did on handling coronavirus, that he suspended all travel to China, and his promise of a safe, effective vaccine by the end of the year.)

Pence said Trump sees America as a good country, more deserving of gratitude than grievance.

The last part of his speech dealt with disorder and civil unrest. Peaceful protest is OK, but “the violence must stop. We will have law and order,” he said.

“You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” he said, adding that Biden is a “Trojan horse for the radical left.”

Pence closed the third night of the Republican National Convention, but the earlier testimonials were a picture, as they say, of what “America looks like.” Translation, there were a lot of African-Americans and women.

One I liked was a guy whose name I knew — Jack Brewer, an NFL safety who played for the Vikings and Giants before the Eagles. He said he fought skinheads in high school, he knows racism, and (as Herschel Walker said earlier) Trump is not a racist. A Democrat, he said people get turned off by Trump’s personality, but his policies are solid.

Another Black retired NFL player was Burgess Owens, who played for the Jets. His great, great grandfather escaped slavery and got to Texas where he went into business.

Owens made a ton of money as a player, lost it and became a chimney sweep, but fought his way into the corporate suite. Democrats want you to believe it’s impossible, he said.

There was a (pardon me) binder of women, whose role was to say Trump promoted and respected women, or he was big on family values, or he opposes abortion. They said he was a ladies’ man, but in a good way.

“They close our churches, but keep the liquor stores and abortion clinics open,” said Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn. 

Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany nailed the emotional highlight when she revealed that she suffers from a hereditary defect that required her to undergo a mastectomy to protect her life. 

Trump stands by Americans with pre-existing  conditions, she said, perhaps laying that topic to rest.

But probably not.