CAT Tracks for May 28, 2017
ALL WE ARE SAYING...

...is give Pence a chance?


From The New York Times

Do We Really Want Mike Pence to Be President?


SundayReview | OPINION

Do We Really Want Mike Pence to Be President?

By STEPHEN RODRICK
MAY 26, 2017


The remarkable thing about Vice President Mike Pence is that he is not remarkable at all.

That’s one of the first things I learned last December when I arrived in Indiana to report on — let’s face it — the next president of the United States. The man takes up very little space, and undoubtedly this was his great appeal to Donald Trump, one of the great oxygen consumers of our time.

Of course, Mr. Pence’s great appeal to many people now is that he is not Donald Trump. Liberals salivate that Robert Mueller might metaphorically reverse an election they see as stolen by a steak salesman and his Moscow buddies. Conservatives dream of ridding themselves of a nutbag and installing a man who can pursue tax cuts and a few more Justice Neil Gorsuches without the fear of a third world war being started because of something Mr. Trump heard on Infowars.

Still, maybe we should all stop and ponder an actual Pence presidency.

Will the man who reportedly calls his wife “Mother” and has no temper to speak of usher in an era of ennui after Mr. Trump’s reign of trauma? Perhaps, but a Pence nap has its own consequences.

It is possible that we could replace the most flamboyant and flamboyantly unqualified president in history with the most quietly unqualified and unexamined president since Warren Harding. (He has never answered whether he believes in evolution, but the evidence is not encouraging.)

Mr. Trump was the bloated Macy’s parade float that no one thought had a chance, and not a lot of time was spent investigating his generic sidekick holding the ropes.

Mr. Pence was elected governor of Indiana in 2012 with less than 50 percent of the vote. Many of the politicos I talked to in Indiana described him as ambitious for the sake of ambition, with no ideological compass other than his evangelical Christianity. They thought that, unlike the previous governor, Mitch Daniels, Mr. Pence was interested in the job mainly to check off executive experience on his presidential-candidate résumé.

He certainly couldn’t stress his 12 years in Congress — an earlier congressional bid exploded when he used campaign funds to pay his mortgage — where he passed exactly zero bills that became law but frequently introduced legislation to defund Planned Parenthood.

Mr. Pence wrote in 2001 that the link between smoking and cancer was not proved, but during the 2012 campaign he hid his paleo-conservative views, talking instead of getting Indiana back to work. He pivoted after taking charge.

In 2015, conservative activists pressured Indiana legislators to introduce the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a bill that would make it easier for Indiana business owners to discriminate against gays if it offended their religious beliefs. Mr. Pence stood on the sidelines as the bill was constructed and signed the legislation in private. He then released a photograph of the signing that was so dumbfounding that Indiana State Representative Ed DeLaney, a Democrat, was accused of Photoshopping it by his colleagues when he circulated it. The photo showed Mr. Pence, pen in hand, surrounded by nuns and monks and three conservative backers, each with violently anti-gay beliefs. Immediately, corporations and convention groups threatened to pull business out of Indianapolis, a move that could have cost the state millions.

The controversy metastasized. Mr. Pence turned down an interview on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.” But after consulting with his wife, Karen, his closest adviser, he decided to make an appearance.

That was a mistake. Mr. Stephanopoulos asked a simple question:

“So yes or no, if a florist in Indiana refuses to serve a gay couple at their wedding, is that legal now in Indiana?”

The governor railed against the “shameless rhetoric” surrounding the law and said: “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act has been on the books for more than 20 years. It does not apply, George, to disputes between individuals unless government action is involved.”

Mr. Stephanopoulos pointed out that supporters of the law said it would protect Christian florists from selling flowers for a gay wedding.

“Governor, is that true or not?”

Mr. Pence didn’t answer the question.

“Is tolerance a two-way street or not?”

Mr. Stephanopoulos gave Mr. Pence two chances to say he was not in favor of discrimination against gay people. He declined and pronounced he would not revise the law.

This did not sit well back home in Indiana. Legislative leaders met to work their way out of the political disaster and Mr. Pence wasn’t invited. A compromise was reached that pleased no one but was mushy enough that the tourists came back. Mr. Pence signed the bill and slipped out of the statehouse without taking any questions.

“America needs to understand that this is what they’re going to get,” said Scott Pelath, the Democratic House minority leader. “He is not going to look at something, assess it, think critically about it and go. He’s going to move slow. He’s going to have to go huddle up and sleep on it and pray on it.”

After the 2015 attacks in Paris, Mr. Pence announced that he was suspending the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Indiana and would cut off aid to groups helping them. A family that was on its way to the state was shuttled to Connecticut, where Gov. Dannel Malloy accepted them, eventually winning a Profile in Courage award.

A federal judge ruled that Mr. Pence’s policy “clearly constitutes national-origin discrimination.”

Then the 2016 campaign began. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act had killed Mr. Pence’s presidential dreams; now he was trying to hang on to his day job. In April, he was booed at the home opener of the Indianapolis Indians, the city’s AAA team, shortly after he signed a restrictive anti-abortion bill. A May poll found the governor and his Democratic opponent in a statistical dead heat.

He hemmed and hawed over endorsing a candidate in the Indiana presidential primary before selecting Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. He made the announcement while reading from notes on talk radio and filled it with so much praise for Mr. Trump that it wasn’t clear which way he was going until he stopped talking.

On July 15, Mr. Trump threw Mr. Pence the life preserver. The Indiana governor gave Mr. Trump cover with the Christian right. And Mr. Pence proved to have something in common with Mr. Trump: Most observers thought he won the vice-presidential debate with Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia by sticking to his talking points, no matter their relationship with reality. (PolitiFact ruled that over 40 percent of Mr. Pence’s statements were either false or mostly false.)

The fact that the anti-abortion-eat-with-no-woman-not-my-wife Pence was able to put his evangelical Christian ideals into a blind trust to serve as conservative coverage for the once pro-choice, grope-braggart Mr. Trump dumbfounded Hoosiers. It shattered the illusion that if Mr. Pence had no gravitas, he at least had principles.

His election to the No. 2 job in November was met in the state Capitol with cartoon-level jaw drops and more-profane mutterings that Mr. Pence was the luckiest guy in the country.

Mr. Pence has done little as vice president to suggest he is rising to the occasion. As head of the transition committee, he was either (a) kept in the dark about Michael Flynn’s being investigated for his international ties or (b) lied about it. Neither is a comforting thought. Both are totally him.

The only certainty of a Pence presidency is a Christian conservative bias for judges who will make Americans long for the relatively sane Justice Gorsuch.

Do I think Mike Pence is less likely to start a nuclear war than Donald Trump or to throw a reporter in jail over a Twitter beef about his daughter’s shoe line? Absolutely. There is that upside.


Stephen Rodrick is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on May 28, 2017, on Page SR4 of the New York edition with the headline: Consider President Pence. Today's Paper|Subscribe


CAT Tracks Editor's Note:

Oh hell no!

So, if you go for the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump...

...well, make sure its a twofer and take Pence down too.

But...

...before you get giddy, consider:

Who'll be the next in line for (our) heartache...

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan!

Doomed as doomed can be...