Mike Pence's stance against negative campaigning raises questions about compatibility with Trump. | AP Photo Is Mike Pence tough enough for Trump? The Indiana governor swore off negative campaigning in the early 1990s.

Donald Trump is looking for a running mate who can not only withstand the attacks of the Democratic machine, but one who can hit back — hard. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who is rumored to be on the verge of getting the job, doesn't really fit the bill.

Trump steamrolled his way through the Republican primary with strong attacks on his rivals, and has brought the same intensity to his fight against Hillary Clinton — or “Lying, Crooked Hillary,” as he calls her.


But now he is poised to be joined by Pence, who swore off negative campaign after a bruising loss in a run for Congress in 1990. Pence penned a repentant essay in 1991 titled “Confessions of a Negative Campaigner.”

“Negative campaigning is wrong,” Pence wrote in the piece, which was published in the Indiana Policy Review. “That is not to say that a negative campaign is an ineffective option in a tough political race. Pollsters will attest — with great conviction — that it is the negatives that move voters. The mantra of a modern political campaign is ‘drive up the negatives.’ … The wrongness is not of rule violated but of opportunity lost. It is wrong, quite simply, because he or she could have brought critical issues before the citizenry.”

Pence went on to write that a campaign “ought to demonstrate the basic human decency of the candidate” and “ought to be about the advancement of issues whose success or failure is more significant than that of the candidate.”

Such ideals clash with a candidate who has said his opponent should be sent to prison and who has declared himself “the only one” who can give voters what they seek.

Pence closed the essay by looking forward to a class of politicians who would turn away from negative campaigning.

“But one day soon the new candidates will step forward, faces as fresh as the morning and hearts as brave as the dawn,” Pence wrote. “This breed will turn away from running ‘to win’ and toward running ‘to stand.’ And its representatives will see the inside of as many offices as their party will nominate them to fill.”

Pence has largely resisted the pressures to go negative over the course of his recent elections. But facing a tough reelection campaign in his home state this year, he has shown a willingness to turn away from the ideals outlined in the essay.

It could be tough, however, for the mild-mannered Hoosier — who often declares himself “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order” — to transition to a national campaign that has been characterized by vicious personal attacks.

Still, there was one line in Pence’s 1991 essay that might appeal to Trump, who often closes his speeches with promises that the United States “will win so much.”

Campaigns, Pence wrote, “should be about winning.”