Adam Wren is a contributing editor at Indianapolis Monthly.

Everybody likes Mike. That much, at least, seemed certain in a weekend of uncertainties, as a cavalcade of Republican officials withdrew their support of Donald Trump in statements and tweets disavowing the GOP nominee’s bawdy banter with NBC's “Access Hollywood” co-host Billy Bush. Virtually all of those statements came with the same political corollary that soon became a refrain. In addition to their dis-endorsements of Trump, the officials floated in the same breath his replacement: Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

The calls from prominent Republicans were loud and clear: “Donald Trump should withdraw and Mike Pence should be our nominee effective immediately,” said John Thune, the GOP Senate’s third-highest-ranking leader, on Saturday. “Donald Trump should withdraw in favor of Governor Mike Pence,” tweeted Republican South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard. “I will be voting for Mike Pence for president,” said Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman. New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte said the same.


But it’s not entirely clear the unassuming understudy-turned White Knight would be the silver-haired savior for whom Republicans are now clamoring. To be certain, Pence isn’t likely to bolt the ticket —especially after the GOP nominee's creditable performance in the second presidential debate Sunday night "Congrats to my running mate @realDonaldTrump on a big debate win! Proud to stand with you," Pence tweeted afterward. On Sunday a top adviser to Pence dismissed questions about the former governor withdrawing from the ticket, denying that such a move was in the works. Pence also had to stomach Trump's seeming brush-back of the vice presidential nominee's previously staked out position on military intervention in Syria. “He and I haven’t spoken, and I disagree,” Trump said, chillily.

All this puts Pence, the Trump loyalist, in a tough position if the video controversy escalates, or another equally damaging revelation emerges. “Pence is in a no-win situation now,” said GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak. “If he drops off the ticket, he wastes the one indisputable advantage of this entire exercise”—using the Trump phenomenon to build a national reputation. If, on the other hand, Pence stays on as veep, he could go down in flames with his running mate. “This was always the bargain—the devil’s bargain that Pence was agreeing to [by joining Trump],” said Mackowiak. “It’s like buying a used car on the highway and not having it inspected.”

There are other hazards as well, Though it’s highly unlikely at this point, should Pence ever replace Trump as the party’s standard-bearer, his record as governor and a congressman would receive a new level of scrutiny it has thus far largely escaped. And the outcome might not be what panicked GOP officials want.

“It would re-expose all of the weaknesses of his time in Indiana,” said Scott Pelath, the top Democrat in the Indiana House of Representatives, citing Pence’s conservative positions on social issues such as abortion and gay rights, and an economic record that includes falling wages for Hoosiers. “There’s a lot there to turn off independent and moderate voters.”

A top Indiana Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly on Pence’s weaknesses, threw water on the idea that a Pence candidacy would be a shoo-in. Graded on a Trumpian curve, Pence seems a staid, sober statesman. But facing off against Hillary Clinton, the dynamics around Pence would shift, and he would have to live or die on the strength of his own congressional and gubernatorial records. Records that haven’t been litigated at any depth as the election continues to hinge on Trump. Pence, after all, doesn’t even have a biography on Trump’s campaign website. And his congressional library at Indiana University in Bloomington is sealed until Dec. 5, 2022 or Pence’s death.

Meanwhile, CBS' Elaine Quijano allowed Pence to skate on the most controversial parts of his record as governor, including his controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act, when an eruption by businesses forced him to backpedal on language that critics feared could be discriminatory against gay people. “It’s not clear what kind of president he’d be,” said the Indiana Republican. “Ideologically, we know from the House that he’d be conservative, but he has shown some pragmatism as governor. But he has more often had a tendency to be reactionary, and not as forceful a leader on big issues. Most of the criticisms of his governorship came when he was ‘leading from behind.’”

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It was a familiar moment: Kellyanne Conway doggedly spinning on behalf of her candidate, running through a magazine of talking points in a rat-a-tat fashion so fast it prevented an interlocutor from interrupting. Her candidate, she said, was the only candidate in 2016 who could beat Hillary Clinton.

It was nearly two years ago this month, and the candidate was Pence, not Trump.

“Get to know him as governor,” Conway, then Pence’s pollster, told me in November 2014. “It's impressive: The largest tax cut in Hoosier history, student-centric education reform, including pre-K for low-income students, choice and charters, no Common Core, the recent sweep of an all-female Republican slate of statewide officers.”

Indeed, Pence’s 2016 chances seemed fortuitous. Fast forward two years. Having fractured a coalition of fiscally conservative and socially moderate Republicans built by his predecessor, former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, Pence’s 2016 relevancy seemed to evaporate by April 2015. A year later, his overtures toward Trump ahead of Indiana’s unexpectedly decisive May Republican primary when he tepidly endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz made Pence politically relevant again (“I particularly want to commend Donald Trump, who I think has given voice to the frustration of millions of working Americans with a lack of progress in Washington, D.C.,” Pence said at the time. It was “more of an endorsement for me,” Trump would later say). Pence parachuted out of a tight governor’s race with Democrat John Gregg—in deep-red Indiana, no less. It was a contest that threatened his political future, mainly on account of his rightward tacks. “Dozens of reputable Republicans spurned the opportunity,” Pelath said. “Mike Pence wanted to be rescued from the governor’s race.”

In July, Pence won the veepstakes. The social conservatives’ social conservative decided to join Trump—a former Democrat who only recently voiced anti-abortion views. It riled some members of Pence’s inner circle, who confessed to me they hope Pence’s turn as a veep candidate wouldn’t cause him to lose his soul in the process. They worried his political ambition would usurp his deeply held convictions.

“Mike Pence often says he is a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican—in that order,” Pelath told me, discussing Pence’s decision to leave the governor’s race. “Tempered in all of those steps is a political ambition for the future. This was his way out.”





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So far, in the highest profile turn of his political career, Pence has proved adroit and polished as Trump’s second, parrying the attacks on him as Trump’s chief’s apologist. By nearly all accounts, he bested Tim Kaine in the vice presidential debate in Farmville, Virginia, at Longwood University, where he spoke in dulcet tones and presented his brand of sunny Reagan-esque conservatism. .“Mike Pence did an incredible job, and I’m getting a lot of credit because that’s really my first so-called choice, that was my first hire,” Trump told a Henderson, Nevada audience last week. Since his Hoosier state rose to unexpected prominence with its decisive May primary, Pence has shown an ability to thread a needle better than Betsy Ross and walk a political tightrope better than Philippe Petit.

To observers in his home state, gone was their governor who bungled the fallout of his Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the ill-advised JustIN state-run news service. In his stead stood a figure with a newly gained political stature and gravitas who could save the party of Lincoln.

Now, he is being asked to walk the highest and most dangerous high wire of his career. From early Friday morning to Saturday evening, Pence’s fortunes oscillated between a Frank Underwood-like ascendance and Kafka-esque despair. On Friday, he awoke to news that a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll pegged him as the leading 2020 contender, with 22 percent of Republicans, beating out 2016 also-rans Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. By Saturday night, Pence’s inner circle was reportedly disconsolate. “I do not condone his remarks and cannot defend them,” Pence said in a historic statement.

Still, a source close to Pence late Saturday afternoon said the high-wire act did not include any attempt to orchestrate the calls for him to replace Trump, adding that Pence had no plans to leave the ticket.

Closer to home on Saturday, in Pence’s own state, one of his closest allies remained on the fence. Even his own handpicked heir apparent, Lieutenant Governor Eric Holcomb, locked in a dogfight with Gregg, distanced himself from Pence. “While I have not made a final decision, my vote and support of any candidate should never be taken for granted,” Holcomb said. In a television ad here that’s in heavy rotation now, Holcomb name checks his experience serving as chief of staff to former Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, but doesn’t mention Pence. And in a gubernatorial debate earlier this month, Holcomb parted with Pence’s controversial decision to bar Syrian refugees from entering Indiana. Meanwhile, Congressman Todd Young—who's in his own political battle with former Senator Evan Bayh—told the Indianapolis Fox affiliate that he was “not sure yet” if would vote for Trump and Pence. (He did say, however, that Trump should take Pence’s counsel more often.)

Presuming Trump doesn’t step down as the party’s standard-bearer, which he has vowed in recent days never to do, Pence would have to contend with die-hard Trump supporters not ready to disembark the Trump train. It’s also not clear Pence would be anything more than a protest vote, rather than potential nominee. Tens of thousands of Americans have already voted early, and with ballots already printed, Pence may be inseparably linked to Trump, even if he wanted off the ticket.

Pence isn’t without strengths. He has a positive economic story to tell (even if he’s coasting on Daniels’ ideas, as some in his own party have suggested). He also has executive experience and has sat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. “He has the ability to put a good team around him,” the Indiana Republican said. “Good people will work for him should be become president. He’s likable. Colleagues in the House liked him. The legislators in Indiana liked him, even they were not going along with his policies. He will bring decorum to a campaign or office. He loves pomp and circumstance and tradition and he pits on a helluva show ... He proved he can debate, [and] may have to do that again under this scenario.”

But when and if his congressional record comes into sharper focus, Pence could face struggle with women (Pence signed into law one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws, which spawned a group called Periods for Pence, who inundated the governor’s office with reports of their menstrual cycle; the law was overruled by a federal justice, and the Indiana attorney general declined to challenge the ruling) and independent voters turned off by his dogmatic conservatism. He once called the Disney film “Mulan” liberal propaganda. “Moral of story: women in military, bad idea,” he wrote in a 1999 op-ed. It isn’t clear he’s moderated since then, even if he’s packaged in a new way now.

“He has rigid and deeply held assumptions about our economic and political future in the U.S.” Pelath said. “The moment they're punctured, he struggles to defend himself. He’ll get a question and ignore it. When he’s at the epicenter, he doesn’t always demonstrate a comfort level. When you’re at the center, you can’t avoid questions. There would be a great level of scrutiny.”

With 29 days until Election Day, Pence could have a lot of explaining to do.

“He will be unknown, and have a very small amount of time to introduce himself,” the Indiana Republican said. “Won’t have any time to make mistakes. Would have to be flawless on the campaign trail.”

Even with Trump still on the ticket, Pence will have to be that anyway now.

