Mike Pence Becomes the Anti-CruzThe New Yorker, Amy Davidson, July 21, 2016
Governor Mike Pence, of Indiana, walked onstage Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention, in Cleveland, to illustrate what it looks like to make a deal with Donald Trump and then put aside every priority but keeping your side of it. Many Republican leaders have compromised themselves in getting on the Trump Train. A number of them seem to believe that if they don’t mention his name too often in their speeches (Paul Ryan), or if they address the Convention by video, rather than in person (Marco Rubio), they will have some shred of deniability in the event that the campaign ends in a crash, and just enough evidence of accommodation to collect some reward, or exemption, if Trump does come through. It is not a satisfying bargain, which may be why Senator Ted Cruz’s self-congratulatory gaming of it, in his non-endorsement speech earlier in the evening, enraged so many compromised Republicans. Pence is in a different position. He is putting his name down not only in the rolls of Trump supporters but on the signs that circle the Convention floor and, soon, right below Trump’s on a ballot.
“Donald Trump gets it. He’s the genuine article,” Pence said. “He’s a doer in a game usually reserved for the talkers.” Trump was “distinctly American,” adding, “Where else would an independent spirit like him find a following but the land of the free and the home of the brave,” as if Trump danced in open fields at sunrise, with flowers in his hair, or guided his motorcycle across the desert at night, hunched over the handlebars, a clutch of riders behind him. Pence, a man who conformed so completely to the cues of the Convention that his tie matched the background projected behind him on the stage, always looks as though he is scanning the horizon, with eyes that could be drawn with a few quick charcoal strokes, for just such an apparition. He called Trump an “uncalculating truth-teller” who didn’t care about political correctness. “Until now, he has had to do it all by himself, against all odds,” Pence said, of his running mate—whose inherited money has been alternately increased and squandered—but help was on the way. Hillary Clinton, he said, was “disqualified” by Benghazi, among other things. “We have but one choice, and that man is ready,” Pence said. “This team is ready.”
Pence called Trump an “outsider,” and, in doing so, assumed the trappings of an insider there to bestow an institutional blessing on an unconventional candidate. In addition to being a governor, Pence spent a dozen years in Congress, becoming a part of the Republican leadership, and Paul Ryan, in one of the few moments of the Convention when he didn’t look put upon, introduced him as a friend. Yet Pence had come to Congress as an early Tea Party type, seen as marginal, particularly on issues such as reproductive rights, gun rights, and the suspicion of regulation as a harbinger of tyranny. Then, over the years, the Party’s policies seeped in his direction. His nomination as the Vice-Presidential candidate is a recognition of who controls the G.O.P’s wider agenda. Ryan had said that Pence came from “the heart of the conservative movement and the heart of America,” and on Wednesday night he began his service as an ambassador to both places. Based on his performance, he might do Trump some good.
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