“he’d get his head chopped off”: Can mike pence survive the man who saved him?

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“HE’D GET HIS HEAD CHOPPED OFF”: CAN MIKE PENCE SURVIVE THE MAN WHO SAVED HIM?
BY KATE ANDERSEN BROWER - MAY 31, 2018 5:00 AM
RE: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018...-who-saved-him

Is wedding himself to Donald Trump Mike Pence’s original sin, or his salvation? In an adaptation from her new book, First in Line: Presidents, Vice Presidents, and the Pursuit of Power, Kate Andersen Brower explains how a Christian warrior was saved by a thrice-married reality star. “Pence knows there’s only one reason on God’s green earth why he’s vice president,” said one administration aide, “and that’s Donald Trump.”

At a Marriott hotel about four miles from the White House, Mike Pence did what he does best: he acted as though everything was perfectly fine. As Donald Trump tweeted obsessively last Friday about so-called “Spygate,” a day after abruptly calling off the nuclear summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Pence, clad in a navy suit and a stars-and-stripes tie, accompanied his wife Karen to a Memorial Day weekend event for family members who have lost loved ones in the military. The couple, whose son Michael is an officer in the Marines, stopped by an art-therapy room where 10 people sat around three separate tables working on art projects—one of Karen Pence’s pet issues. “It’s beautiful,” Pence said of a spirit stick made of twigs and yarn. Later, both Pences spoke to more than a thousand people, half of them children. “I want to bring greetings and gratitude and respect from the president of the United States, President Donald Trump,” Pence said. Though he seemed to pause for it, no applause followed.

Such is the agony and the ecstasy of Mike Pence, Trump’s most faithful servant, and the man who many in Washington, D.C., suspect could one day become his Judas. As vice president, Pence’s job is to execute those duties that Trump does not—campaigning across the country in advance of the midterm elections, meeting with local politicians, wealthy donors, and power brokers, and staying relentlessly on message. But fortifying the president’s political base without raising concerns about his own ambitions has become an extreme high-wire act. While his aides want to make it known that he is involved in major decisions—they say he and the president spend at least three hours together every day and talk on the phone in the morning and at night—they refuse to go into specifics that might overinflate his profile. On one hand, Pence, who’s known within the White House as “on-message Mike,” is unfailingly loyal, careful not to encroach on the president’s spotlight or stray from his agenda for fear of provoking his wrath. (“He is on the side of the president,” his communications director Jarrod Agen told me when I asked where he stood on whether or not a meeting with North Korea should take place.) On the other, even top aides admit that Pence is loyal to a fault, sometimes standing by and defending Trump even when it jeopardizes his own reputation. Ultimately, his subservience could cost him what he wants more than anything: the presidency.

Pence, whom one administration staffer called “the politician in the building,” has been an important asset to Trump, bolstering his credentials among the influential religious right and lending credibility to his most conservative campaign promises. An evangelical Christian, Pence kept an open Bible on his desk when he was governor of Indiana, and he backed the deeply divisive decision to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He also helped to push Trump’s tax bill through Congress, though he would take no credit. At a Cabinet meeting shortly after the bill passed, Pence offered up some of his most effusive praise, gushing about his boss for three minutes straight and crediting him for “restoring American credibility on the world stage.” Pence’s first vice-presidential chief of staff, Josh Pitcock, summed up his approach: “His job is defined by one person, and the most important thing is to protect that relationship.” Pence believes in the “servant leadership” model grounded in Christianity that extols the virtues of submission and obedience. “Follow the chain of command without exception,” he said at his U.S. Naval Academy commencement address in May 2017. “Submit yourselves, as the saying goes, to the authorities that have been placed above you.”

It’s little wonder, then, that Pence’s staffers deny his ambitions. When I interviewed Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers—a 35-year-old wunderkind who previously ran the Republican Governors Association—in his tiny West Wing office late last year, he was measured and thoughtful; the only thing that obviously got under his skin were the growing number of headlines suggesting Pence is positioning himself for the presidency. Aides look almost fearful when asked to name two key decisions Pence has played a decisive role in, knowing that Trump will be angry if he gets any credit. When Pence offered the intensely controversial Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio over-the-top praise earlier this month, calling him “a great friend of this president, a tireless champion of strong borders and the rule of law,” two staffers told me privately that they wish Pence had not said it. “You can see the position we’re in. He knows how much the president likes Arpaio. So we’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t.”

Yet Pence is clearly making inroads independent of the president. Not only did he become the first vice president to create his own PAC last year, which he uses to help pay for travel on Air Force Two as he crisscrosses the country to stump for Republican candidates, he relentlessly courts friends and allies in Congress. When Pence goes to the Hill to “touch gloves,” as he calls it, on a weekly basis, he insists on walking through the Capitol Rotunda so that tourists can get their photos taken with him. As head of the transition, Pence installed key allies throughout the government, including Marc Short, who was his top aide on the Hill and who is now Trump’s legislative director. (Short also led the powerful political arm overseen by billionaires Charles and David Koch, whose support would be a boon to Pence in the event of his own presidential bid.)

Pence hosts dinners for wealthy donors at the Naval Observatory, the vice-presidential residence about three miles from the White House, where he nurses Arnold Palmers. (He quit drinking when he became a member of Congress; former top aide Jim Atterholt said he made the decision because he wants “to have his wits about him.”) At these exclusive dinners he makes sure to talk to each guest, though he has fallen out of touch with many of his friends from Indiana. Like Joe Biden, Pence uses his time as a member of Congress (he spent 12 years in the House before becoming governor of Indiana) to exert some level of influence on Trump. He has told the president not to endorse Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, to take Paul Ryan’s place as Speaker after Ryan announced his retirement in April. Let House Republicans work it out on their own, he told the president. “Mike is that voice that whispers in the president’s ear that keeps him focused and calm,” said Doug Deason, a wealthy donor who describes Pence as a friend and says he “certainly” expects him to run for president in 2024. “If Mike wasn’t there, it would be a lot more caustic.”

If Pence was known outside of Indiana prior to 2016, it was thanks to the controversial religious-freedom bill he signed into law the year prior, which drew outrage from opponents who said it sanctioned discrimination. His popularity within the state had taken a beating, and he faced a daunting race for re-election as governor. Then, along came Trump. “Pence knows there’s only one reason on God’s green earth why he’s vice president,” said one administration aide, “and that’s Donald Trump.” Melania Trump, too, played a crucial role in choosing her husband’s running mate. Some combination of Trump’s eldest children—Donald Jr., Eric, Ivanka—and Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, had become mainstays at meetings with Washington lawyers in charge of vetting vice-presidential candidates. But at the final decisive meeting at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, it was Melania who drew the bottom line. Whoever is chosen, she insisted, must be “clean.”

That meant no affairs and no messy financial entanglements. She realized that her husband had a surplus of that already. It meant, in other words, no Newt Gingrich and no Chris Christie, two other contenders. A couple of Trump’s other possible picks, including Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, took themselves out of the running not because of personal entanglements, but because of moral objections—they felt they could not defend Trump every day, a key element of the vice presidency. Melania has been characterized as disengaged and unhappy as First Lady, but she injected a note of common sense into the proceedings that her husband, who privately pushed for retired Gen. Michael Flynn to stay on his list of running-mate options, lacked. (After lying to Pence, Flynn made a swift exit from the White House as national security adviser and later pled guilty to making false statements about his contact with the Russians.

In early July 2016, shortly before Trump named Pence as his running mate, the Pences visited Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. After a round of golf, Pence, already keenly aware of Trump’s desperate desire to be flattered, announced to the press that Trump “beat me like a drum.” Privately, the Pences told the Trumps, “We’ve been praying for this meeting. We’ve been praying for you.” The Trumps were stunned and replied, “What do you mean ‘praying for us?’” The Pences told them they were “praying for wisdom, for clarity of thought.” Neither Donald nor Melania knew what to say. Karen and Mike talked about their Christian faith. “The Trumps were intrigued,” said a person familiar with the conversation. They were fascinated by this couple who held hands, who cooked breakfast at the Indiana governor’s mansion and who, to Trump’s surprise, had less than $15,000 in the bank. They might as well have been aliens.

“Directable Talent”
Before he was elected to Congress, Pence sought name recognition in Indiana as a radio host, marketing himself as “Rush Limbaugh on decaf.” “He could not be a more directable talent,” said Kent Sterling, who was an assistant program director for The Mike Pence Show. When Pence started out in radio, Sterling directed him to try not to be too long-winded. “He nodded when I asked him and I wondered if he got it. The next day he was spot on. He was perfect and he never deviated.” Pence’s friends from Indiana say Mike and Karen see the world as engaged in a moral conflict between those who are against Christianity and those who support it. “I’ve never questioned Mike Pence’s convictions with respect to his faith,” said Scott Pelath, who was Democratic minority leader in the Indiana House when Pence was governor. “He’s gotten exactly what he’s wanted in his life of faith. I’m worried that it’s made him even more resolute in his belief that he’s been sent on a holy mission. And that is dangerous for the country. It’s untenable.”

When Pence ran for Congress in 1990, he launched a vicious campaign against incumbent Phil Sharp. He later apologized publicly for his behavior, but Sharp told me in a recent interview that he cannot recall ever receiving a personal apology from Pence. “He’s what I call ‘Midwest nice,’” Sharp said. “You don’t treat people meanly or nastily to their face. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t mean and nasty. It’s a veneer of niceness.” After finally being elected to Congress, Pence went after his party’s third most powerful position in the House—that of Republican Conference chairman—and won in 2008. His job was to reshape the Republican party’s messaging after widespread losses. On the wall of the conference room he hung his personal credo:

MIKE PENCE’S CONFERENCE RULES:

- Glorify God

- Have a Servant’s Attitude

- Promote Ideas

- Promote House Republicans

- Have Fun

One longtime friend of Pence’s said that Pence considered the vice presidency a “divine appointment.” Two years before Pence became vice president, he and his friend Dan Coats, then an Indiana senator and now Trump’s director of national intelligence, talked privately about their political futures. Pence was weighing whether to run for governor for a second term or to seek the presidency in 2016, and Coats was trying to decide whether to run for re-election to the Senate. “We talked about the future and where God might lead each of us,” Coats recalled. “We prayed that God would be clear, and I think I raised the question that we should pray for clarity, not for what we want but clarity for what God would want.” Coats went on to reluctantly accept Trump’s offer to head the intelligence community, but only after Pence repeatedly asked him to take the job.

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