Mike Pence gets the media to give his image a much-needed fluffing
Two of America’s leading newspapers seem to have declared it “Mike and Karen Pence tongue bath day.” The New York Times offered up its tongue—occasionally edged with a little speculation about Pence’s ambitions—to Mike, while the Washington Post took on Karen. It’s a thing that makes you go hmmm. Hmmm, as in, “the Pence PR operation has obviously swung into gear. I wonder why that might be happening right now?”
Mike Pence, once an unpopular Indiana governor most famous for signing a license-to-discriminate law that drew nationwide opposition, is now characterized as “a Hill-wise former Indiana congressman who is typically a palliative presence in an administration of piranhas.” When Reince Priebus flailed and Jared Kushner left town, it was Pence who stepped in to restore order in a White House with problems “from the president’s sketchy grasp on policy, to the heavy-handed tactics of his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon.” But otherwise “he has held his capital in reserve, choosing to tread lightly on certain issues,” and on some issues—Mike Flynn and Russia—he’s been way outside of the loop.
In translation: Mike Pence got the New York Times to run an article pushing his desired narrative that he’s more effective than anyone else in the White House and the things that have gone wrong haven’t been his fault because he’s not in charge and he’s keeping his distance from the Trump Dumpster fire. The article all but admits the second half of that sentence:
One Republican senator close to Mr. Pence said that his colleagues initially viewed him as an alternative-reality president who would prod Mr. Trump’s presidency toward normalcy — a notion that vanished during the administration’s frenetic first week. Democrats and Never-Trump Republicans still view him as a president-in-waiting, in hopes that Mr. Trump will somehow be brought down by scandal.
That the vice president has occupied a position one step outside Mr. Trump’s innermost circle of power seemed to reinforce the view, at least among Democrats, that he was holding back to position himself as a fallback option.
Ya think?