Mike Pence is in a weird spot
“And now for something completely different,” John Cleese routinely intoned between absurdist sketches on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” He might have been wearing a tuxedo or a pink bikini, and on one occasion he said it while appearing to be roasting on a spit.
After the debacle of 2020 — a year that felt a little like being on that spit — many people are yearning for a clean break, “something completely different.”
It might be too much to ask. The year begins with two pieces of leftover business: the runoff elections in Georgia Tuesday that will determine which party controls the US Senate, and the session of Congress Wednesday at which the Electoral College’s votes to elect Joe Biden will be counted. The first is genuinely suspenseful, the second purely a formality, though one some Republican lawmakers are threatening to use as a forum to air President Donald Trump’s baseless claim that he was cheated of reelection by massive voter fraud.