No one has such a divided relationship with Donald Trump as Mike Pence: the former deputy turned from a loyal second to a mob target – and now to a challenger to the old boss.
Mike Pence on his Harley Davidson, Mike Pence in jeans and a leather vest, Mike Pence next to a bale of straw, Mike Pence on the back of a pickup truck. The otherwise rather buttoned-up Republican has been touring the state of Iowa for days and is the popular campaigner.
The Republican wants the White House. Pence submitted the necessary documents to the electoral commission on Monday. This Wednesday, on his 64th birthday, the official announcement of his presidential candidacy will follow – also in Iowa, where the Republican primaries traditionally start. Pence’s entry into the campaign stands out in several ways.
Competitor: Donald Trump
The Republican wants to run against Democratic President Joe Biden – but above all against his former boss, ex-President Donald Trump, who is also running for a second term in the 2024 election. That a former vice president challenges his ex-boss in the election campaign is in itself a remarkable event. This is even more true in the case of Pence and Trump.
Nobody has such a divided relationship with the former president as Pence. For four years he stood loyally as a deputy at Trump’s side, always overly loyal, almost subservient. No public statement from Pence without praising the boss. Stoically, Pence endured all the scandals of the then president, even those that brought Pence to the moral breaking point as an evangelical Christian. This only ended at that moment, at the very end of his term in office, when Trump openly incited his supporters against Pence, when the president’s mob hooted “hang Mike Pence” and the vice president feared for his life.
Assault on the Capitol – and on democracy
It was January 6, 2021. The day on which Congress, under Pence’s chairmanship, was supposed to formally confirm Biden’s election victory – and the day that degenerated into an unprecedented attack on US democracy. Trump saw his deputy as a last resort in his unprecedented campaign against the outcome of the election and claimed that Pence, in his role as vice president, could simply dismiss election results from individual states – which experts dismissed as unlawful and Pence rigorously rejected.
As Trump’s supporters stormed the Congressional seat, the then-President tweeted that Pence “didn’t have the guts to do what should be done.” The mob then yelled “Hang Mike Pence”. Trump’s deputy had to hide with security guards in a garage under the Capitol complex while a rope dangled from a gallows outside the building.
“It didn’t end well,” Pence said in an interview many months later about his “close working relationship” with Trump. That’s putting it mildly, for an incumbent president handing his vice president over to a violent mob in front of the world. Pence later called Trump’s behavior dangerous and wrong. History will hold Trump accountable for this, he warned. And yes, he was “mad” at Trump. That sounds somewhat conservative. Pence’s withdrawal movements came in a moderate tonality.
The Trump dilemma
The Republican is attempting the almost impossible balancing act of going as far as possible from Trump without alienating his supporters. He needs to tout the work of the joint administration to brush up on his own record while explaining to people why he thinks Trump is the wrong man in the White House. Of all the Republican nominees facing this dilemma, Pence has it the hardest – because of his charged history with Trump.
On many substantive issues, Pence takes a similarly tough right-wing position as Trump. “I was tea partying before it was cool,” Pence said of himself in 2011, referring to the ultra-conservative tea party movement within his party. Many liberal Democrats considered Pence the more politically “dangerous” of the two during the Trump years – because he represents ultra-conservative positions without sharing Trump’s penchant for chaos and scandal.
On a human level, the two couldn’t be more different. There’s Pence, the good Christian, the strict evangelical, for whom it is already a transgression to have a meal alone with a woman other than his wife. Who only attends events where alcohol is served when he has his wife by his side. On the other hand, Trump has boasted in the past that a celebrity can touch women anywhere, including their genitals. Who was held responsible in court for a sexual assault and has to answer in a procedure for dubious hush money payments to a porn star.
Christian, Conservative, Republican – “in order”
Trump didn’t bring Pence to his side by accident. The deputy covered for Trump the important constituency of evangelicals, provided his scandal-ridden boss with an outward veneer of solidity and morality, at least according to conservative judgment. Pence regularly says of himself that he is “a Christian, a Conservative and a Republican – in that order”. He describes his Christian faith and marriage to his wife Karen as the most important influences in his life – presumably also in that order. The 64-year-old talks often and a lot about religion. His latest book is called “So help me God”.
Pence could definitely score with devout Christians in the country. He is also widely known for his time as Vice President. Only: He is not very popular. For some Republicans, the man with the image of the good civil servant is too stiff, too boring and not charismatic enough. Some die-hard Trump fans, on the other hand, see him as a “traitor”. In polls, Pence is currently ahead of former US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, and others. But far behind Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis – and completely behind Trump.