Mike Pence Is a Born Again Christian
No man can serve two masters, the Bible teaches, merely Mike Pence is giving it his all. It'south a sweltering September afternoon in Anderson, Indiana, and the vice president has returned to his home state to deliver the Proficient News of the Republicans' recently unveiled revenue enhancement program. The visit is a large deal for Anderson, a fading manufacturing hub about 20 miles outside Muncie that hasn't hosted a sitting president or vice president in 65 years—a fact noted by several warm-upwardly speakers. To mark this historic borough occasion, the cavernous mill where the event is existence held has been transformed. Idle machinery has been shoved to the perimeter to make room for risers and cameras and a gargantuan American flag, which—forth with bleachers full of constituents carefully selected for their ethnic diversity and power to stay awake during speeches about tax policy—will serve as the TV-ready properties for Pence's remarks.
When the time comes, Pence takes the stage and greets the oversupply with a booming "Hellooooo, Indiana!" He says he has "just hung up the phone" with Donald Trump and that the president asked him to "say how-do-you-do." He delivers this message with a slight chuckle that has a certain, almost subversive quality to it. Watch Pence give plenty speeches, and y'all'll find that this often happens when he'south in front of a friendly oversupply. He'll exist witnessing to evangelicals at a mega-church, or addressing conservative supporters at a rally, and when the moment comes for him to pass along the president'south well-wishes, the words are invariably accompanied by an amused fiddling chuckle that prompts knowing laughter from the attendees. It's about as if, in that brief, barely perceptible moment, Pence is sending a message to those with ears to hear—that he recognizes the absurdity of his state of affairs; that he knows just what sort of man he's working for; that while things may expect bad at present, there is a thou purpose at work here, a plan that will manifest itself in due fourth dimension. Let non your hearts be troubled, he seems to be saying. I've got this.
And so, all at once, Pence is back on bulletin. In his folksy Midwestern drawl, he recites Republican aphorisms virtually "job creators" and regulatory "reddish tape," and heralds the many supposed triumphs of Trump'due south young presidency. As he nears the end of his remarks, his happy-warrior buoyancy gives manner to a more sober cadence. "We've come up to a pivotal moment in the life of this state," Pence soulfully intones. "It'southward a good time to pray for America." His voice rising in righteous fervor, the vice president promises an opening of the heavens. "If His people who are called by His name volition humble themselves and pray," he proclaims, "He'll hear from heaven, and He'll heal this land!"
It's like shooting fish in a barrel to come across how Pence could put and then much religion in the possibilities of divine intervention. The very fact that he is standing backside a lectern bearing the vice-presidential seal is, one could debate, a loaves-and-fishes-level phenomenon. Just a year earlier, he was an embattled modest-state governor with underwater blessing ratings, dismal reelection prospects, and a national reputation in tatters. In many ways, Pence was on the aforementioned doomed trajectory every bit the conservative-Christian movement he'd long championed—one time a political force to be reckoned with, now a battered relic of the civilisation wars.
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Considering God works in mysterious ways (or, at the very least, has a postmodern sense of humour), it was Donald J. Trump—gracer of Playboy covers, delighter of stupor jocks, collector of mistresses—who descended from the mountaintop in the summer of 2016, GOP presidential nomination in hand, offering salvation to both Pence and the religious right. The question of whether they should wednesday themselves to such a man was not without its theological considerations. But subsequently eight years of Barack Obama and a string of disorienting political defeats, conservative Christians were in retreat and out of options. So they placed their faith in Trump—and then, incredibly, he won.
In Pence, Trump has institute an obedient deputy whose willingness to suffer indignity and humiliation at the pleasance of the president appears boundless. When Trump comes under fire for describing white nationalists as "very fine people," Pence is there to clinch the globe that he is really a man of bang-up decency. When Trump needs someone to fly across the land to an NFL game so he tin walk out in protest of national-canticle kneelers, Pence heads for Air Force Ii.
Meanwhile, Pence's presence in the White Firm has been a boon for the religious right. Evangelical leaders across the state indicate to his record on abortion and religious freedom and liken him to a prophet restoring bourgeois Christianity to its rightful place at the center of American life. "Mike Pence is the 24-karat-gold model of what we want in an evangelical political leader," Richard State, the president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary and i of Trump's faith advisers, told me. "I don't know anyone who'southward more consistent in bringing his evangelical-Christian worldview to public policy."
Simply what does Pence make of his own improbable rise to the vice presidency, and how does he reconcile his organized religion with serving a man like Trump? Over the past several months, I've spoken with dozens of people who have known the vice president throughout his life—from higher fraternity brothers and longtime friends to trusted advisers and political foes. (Pence himself declined my requests for an interview.) While many of them expressed surprise and even bewilderment at the heights of power Pence had attained, those who know him all-time said he sees no mystery in why he'south in the White Firm. "If y'all're Mike Pence, and you believe what he believes, you lot know God had a plan," says Ralph Reed, an evangelical power broker and a friend of the vice president'south.
Pence has so far showed absolute deference to the president—and as a outcome he has become i of the most influential figures in the White House, with a broad portfolio of responsibilities and an unprecedented level of autonomy. But for all his aw-shucks modesty, Pence is a man who believes heaven and Earth accept conspired to identify him a heartbeat—or an impeachment vote—away from the presidency. At some crucial juncture in the non-too-distant future, that could make him a threat to Trump.
Pence'south public persona can seem straight out of the Columbus, Indiana, of his youth, a quiet suburb of Indianapolis where conformity was a virtue and quondam-fashioned values reigned. His dad ran a concatenation of convenience stores; his mom was a homemaker who took care of him and his five siblings. The Pences were devout Irish-Cosmic Democrats, and Mike and his brothers served as altar boys at St. Columba Catholic Church.
Young Mike did non initially thrive in this setting. He was useless at football (he later sized up his ain abilities as "ane grade to a higher place the blocking sled"), and he lacked the natural athleticism of his brothers, who were "lean and hard and thin." Pence was "a fat little child," he told a local newspaper in 1988, "the existent pumpkin in the pickle patch."
But by the time Pence arrived at Hanover College—a small liberal-arts school in southern Indiana—he had slimmed down, discovered a talent for public speaking, and developed something akin to swagger. The yearbooks from his undergraduate days are filled with photos that portray Pence every bit a kind of campus cliché: the nighttime-haired, square-jawed stud strumming an acoustic guitar on the quad as he leads a gaggle of coeds in a sing-forth. In i picture, Pence mugs for the camera in a fortune-teller costume with a daughter draped over his lap; in another, he poses goofily in an unbuttoned shirt that shows off his trunk.
Pence wasn't a bad student, but he wasn't particularly bookish either, managing a B-plus average amid a busy campus social life. As a freshman, he joined Phi Gamma Delta and became an enthusiastic participant in the Greek experience. Dan Murphy, a former fraternity blood brother of Pence's who now teaches history at Hanover, told me that the "Phi Gams" were an eclectic bunch. "Yous had in that fraternity house everything from the sort of evangelical-Christian crowd to some fairly difficult-core drug users." Pence was friendly with all of them, and in his sophomore year was elected president of the fraternity.
Spud and Pence lived in neighboring rooms, and made a addiction of attending Catholic Mass together on Sunday nights. On their walks back home, they often talked about their futures, and it became articulate to Murphy that his friend had a much stronger sense of his "mission in the world" than the boilerplate undergrad. Pence agonized over his "calling." He talked nigh entering the priesthood, only ultimately felt fatigued instead to politics, a realm where he believed he could harness God's ability to do adept. It was obvious to his fraternity brothers, Murphy told me, that Pence wanted to be president one day.
Pence underwent two conversions in college that would shape the rest of his life. The first came in the spring of 1978, when he route-tripped to Kentucky with some evangelical friends for a music festival billed equally the Christian Woodstock. After a day of rocking out to Jesus-loving prog-rock bands and born-again Bob Dylan imitators, Pence found himself sitting in a lite rain, yearning for a more than personal human relationship with Christ than was afforded by the ritualized Catholicism of his youth. "My heart really, finally bankrupt with a deep realization that what had happened on the cantankerous in some infinitesimal way had happened for me," Pence recounted in March 2017. Information technology was there, he said, that he gave his life to Jesus.
The other conversion was a partisan i. Pence had entered higher a staunch supporter of Jimmy Carter, and he viewed the 1980 presidential election as a contest between a "good Christian" and a "vacuous motion-picture show star." But President Ronald Reagan won Pence over—instilling in him an appreciation for both movement conservatism and the leadership potential of vacuous entertainers that would serve him well later in life.
Murphy told me another story nigh Pence that has stayed with him. During their sophomore year, the Phi Gamma Delta house found itself perpetually on probation. The picture show Animal House had recently come out, and the fraternity brothers were constantly re-creating their favorite scenes, with toga parties, outlandish pranks, and other miscellaneous mischief. Nearly vexing to the schoolhouse'south assistants was their violation of Hanover's strict alcohol prohibition. The Phi Gams devised elaborate schemes to smuggle booze into the house, complete with a network of campus lookouts. Pence was non a specially hard partyer, merely he gamely presided over these efforts, and when things went sideways he was often called upon to smooth things over with the adults.
I night, during a rowdy party, Pence and his fraternity brothers got discussion that an acquaintance dean was on his manner to the business firm. They scrambled to hide the kegs and plastic cups, and then Pence met the administrator at the door.
"Nosotros know you've got a keg," the dean told Pence, according to Potato. Typically when scenes like this played out, one of the brothers would take the fall, claiming that all the alcohol was his and thus sparing the house from formal subject. Instead, Pence led the dean directly to the kegs and admitted that they belonged to the fraternity. The resulting penalisation was astringent. "They really raked u.s.a. over the coals," White potato said. "The whole business firm was locked down." Some of Pence's fraternity brothers were furious with him—but he managed to stay on skilful terms with the administration. Such proficient terms, in fact, that after he graduated, in 1981, the schoolhouse offered him a task in the admissions office.
Decades later, when Murphy read about Pence vying for a spot on the presidential ticket with Donald Trump, he recognized a familiar quality in his onetime friend. "Somewhere in the midst of all that genuine humility and good feeling, this is a guy who's got that ambition," Murphy told me. And he wondered, "Is Mike's religiosity a fashion of justifying that ambition to himself?"
For all Pence's outward piousness, he'southward kept the details of his spiritual journey opaque. Despite his conversion to evangelical Christianity in college, he married his wife, Karen, in a Catholic ceremony and until the mid‑'90s periodically referred to himself as an "evangelical Catholic." That formulation might befuddle theologians, simply it reveals the boggling degree to which Pence'south personal religious evolution paralleled the rise of the religious right.
Indeed, it was but a twelvemonth later on Pence's built-in-again experience in Kentucky that Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Bulk, a national motility that aimed to plow Christian voters into a pavement-pounding political force. In the decades that followed, white evangelicals forged an alliance with conservative Catholics to fight abortion, gay marriage, and an encroaching secularism that they saw every bit a threat to their religious liberty. With conservative believers feeling under siege, denominational differences began to cook away.
In 1988, at historic period 29, Pence launched his first bid for Congress. He garnered attention by riding a single-speed cycle around his district in sneakers and short shorts, dodging aggravated motorists and drumming upwardly conversations with prospective voters on the sidewalk. It was a perfectly Pencian gimmick—earnest, virtually unbearably cheesy—and information technology helped him win the Republican nomination. But he was unable to defeat the Democratic incumbent, Phil Sharp.
Pence tried once again two years later, this time ditching the wheel in favor of vicious attack ads. The race is remembered as one of the nastiest in Indiana history. In one notorious Pence campaign spot, an histrion dressed as a cartoonish Arab sheikh thanked Precipitous for advancing the interests of strange oil. The tone of the entrada was jarring coming from a candidate who had nurtured such a wholesome paradigm, a contrast memorably captured in an Indianapolis Star headline: "Pence Urges Clean Campaign, Calls Opponent a Liar." He ended upwardly losing by 19 points afterwards it was revealed that he was using entrada funds to pay his mortgage and grocery bills (a practise that was then legal just has since been outlawed).
Afterward, a humbled Pence attempted public repentance by personal essay. His commodity, "Confessions of a Negative Campaigner," ran in newspapers across the state. "Christ Jesus came to save sinners," the essay began, quoting 1 Timothy, "amidst whom I am foremost of all."
With 2 failed congressional bids behind him, Pence decided to change tack. In 1992, he debuted a conservative talk-radio show that he described as "Rush Limbaugh on decaf." The quaint joke belied the meticulousness with which Pence went most building his local media empire. "He knew exactly what he wanted his brand to be and who his audience was," says Ed Feigenbaum, the publisher of a country-politics tip sheet, whom Pence oft consulted. Virtually of his listeners were "retirees and conservative housewives," Feigenbaum says, and Pence carefully catered to them. Over the adjacent 8 years, he expanded his radio show to 18 markets, started hosting a talk evidence on a local Television set station, launched a proto-blog, and published a newsletter, "The Pence Report," which locals remember primarily for its frequent typos and Pence's lovingly drawn political cartoons.
"His Mikeness," as he became known on the air, began each radio bear witness with a signature opening line—"Greetings across the amber waves of grain"—and filled the hours with a mix of interviews, listener calls, and medium-hot takes. Pence's commentary from this period is a near-perfect fourth dimension capsule of '90s culture-war trivia. He railed against assisted suicide ("Kevorkian is a monster") and fretted about the insufficient punishment given to a female Air Force pilot who had engaged in an extramarital thing ("Is adultery no longer a big deal in Indiana and in America?"). He mounted a rousing defense force of Big Tobacco ("Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn't kill") and lamented parents' growing reliance on day care (pop culture "has sold the big prevarication that 'Mom doesn't matter' ").
Pence as well demonstrated a knack for seizing on more-creative wedge problems. For instance, a 1995 initiative to reintroduce otters into Indiana's wildlife population became, in Pence's able hands, a frightening case of Big Government run amok. "Land-sanctioned, sanitized otters today," he warned, ominously. "Buffaloes tomorrow?"
Despite Pence's on-air civilization-warring, he rarely came off equally disagreeable. He liked to draw himself equally "a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that guild," and he was careful to show respect for opposing viewpoints. "Nobody always left an interview not liking Mike," says Scott Uecker, the radio executive who oversaw Pence'south prove.
Past the time a congressional seat opened up ahead of the 2000 election, Pence was a pocket-size Indiana celebrity and state Republicans were urging him to run. In the summer of 1999, as he was mulling the decision, he took his family on a trip to Colorado. One day while horseback riding in the mountains, he and Karen looked heavenward and saw 2 cherry-red-tailed hawks soaring over them. They took it every bit a sign, Karen recalled years later: Pence would run again, but this time there would be "no flapping." He would glide to victory.
To his colleagues on Capitol Hill—an overwhelmingly secular place where even many Republicans privately sneer at people of religion—everything virtually the Indiana congressman screamed "Bible thumper." He was known to pray with his staffers, and ofttimes cited scripture to explain his votes. In a 2002 interview with Congressional Quarterly, for instance, he explained, "My back up for Israel stems largely from my personal organized religion. In the Bible, God promises Abraham, 'Those who anoint yous I will anoint, and those who curse you I will expletive.' " He became a champion of the fight to restrict abortion and defund Planned Parenthood.
Pence didn't take a reputation for legislative acumen ("I would not call Mike a policy wonk," one former staffer told the Indianapolis Monthly), and some of his colleagues called him a nickname behind his back: "Mike Dense." Simply he did take abrupt political instincts. Soon, he was climbing the leadership ranks and making connections with key figures in the conservative-Christian establishment. The New Yorker'due south Jane Mayer has documented Pence's close ties to the Koch brothers and other GOP mega-donors, but his roots in the religious right are fifty-fifty deeper. In 2011, as he began plotting a presidential run in the upcoming election cycle, Pence met with Ralph Reed, the evangelical power broker, to seek his advice.
Reed told Pence he should render abode and become elected governor of Indiana first, and so use the statehouse as a launching pad for a presidential bid. He said a few years in the governor'southward mansion—combined with his deep support on the Christian right—would make him a height-tier candidate in the 2016 primaries.
Pence took Reed's communication, and in 2012 launched a gubernatorial bid. Casting himself as the heir to the popular approachable governor, Mitch Daniels, he avoided social issues and ran on a pragmatic, business-friendly platform. He used Ronald Reagan every bit a political style guru and told his ad makers that he wanted his campaign commercials to accept "that 'Morn in America' feel." He meticulously fine-tuned early cuts of the ads, asking his consultants to edit this or reframe that or zoom in here instead of there.
But he wasn't willing to win at all costs. When the race tightened in the homestretch, Pence faced immense pressure from consultants to become negative. A former adviser recalls heated conference calls in which campaign brass urged him to dark-green-light an assault advertisement on his Democratic opponent, John Gregg. Pence refused. "He didn't want to be a hypocrite," the former adviser says.
Pence won the race anyway, and set about cutting taxes and taking on local unions—burnishing a résumé that would impress Republican donors and Iowa caucus-goers. The governor's stock began to rise in Washington, where he was widely viewed as a contender for the 2016 presidential nomination.
Then, in early 2015, Pence stumbled into a culture-war debacle that would come to define his governorship. At the urging of conservative-Christian leaders in Indiana, the GOP-controlled land legislature passed a bill that would have allowed religious business owners to deny services to gay customers in sure circumstances. Pence signed it into police in a airtight-press ceremony at the statehouse, surrounded by nuns, monks, and right-wing lobbyists. A photo of the signing was released, and all hell broke loose. Corporate leaders threatened to cease adding jobs in Indiana, and national organizations began pulling scheduled conventions from the state. The NCAA, which is headquartered in Indianapolis, put out a statement suggesting that the law might imperil "future events." The Indianapolis Star ran a rare front-page editorial under an all-caps headline: "Gear up THIS Now."
Caught off guard by the controversy, Pence accepted an invitation to appear on This Week With George Stephanopoulos, where he intended to make the case that the police force wasn't anti-gay just rather pro–religious freedom. What took identify instead was an excruciating 12-minute interview in which Pence awkwardly danced around the same straightforward question: Does this law allow a Christian florist to refuse service for a aforementioned-sex wedding ceremony? "George, look," Pence said at ane betoken, sounding frustrated, "the consequence here is, you lot know, is tolerance a two-way street or not?"
For Pence—and the conservative-Christian movement he represented—this was more than than just a talking point. In recent years, the religious right had been abruptly forced to pivot from law-breaking to defence force in the culture wars—abandoning the "family unit values" crusades and talk of "remoralizing America," and focusing its energies on cocky-preservation. Conservative Christians had lost the battles over schoolhouse prayer, sex pedagogy, and pornography censorship, and the Supreme Courtroom was poised to legalize same-sex spousal relationship. Meanwhile, a widespread decline in churchgoing and religious amalgamation had contributed to a growing feet amidst conservative believers. Past 2017, white evangelicals would tell pollsters that Christians faced more discrimination in America than Muslims did.
To many Christians, the backlash against Indiana's "religious freedom" bill was a frightening sign of the secular left's triumphalism. Liberals were no longer working toward tolerance, it seemed—they were out for conquest. "Many evangelicals were experiencing the sense of an almost existential threat," Russell Moore, a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, told me. Information technology was only a matter of fourth dimension, he said, earlier cultural elites' scornful attitudes would assistance bulldoze Christians into the arms of a strongman like Trump. "I call up at that place needs to be a deep reflection on the left about how they helped make this happen."
After vii chaotic days, Pence caved and signed a revised version of the religious-freedom bill—but past then it was too late. His approval ratings were in costless fall, Democrats were raising coin to defeat him in the adjacent gubernatorial election, and the political obituaries were existence written. Things looked grimmer for Pence, and the religious right, than they ever had before.
Deliverance manifested itself to Mike Pence on the dorsum nine of Donald Trump's golf course in New Jersey. It was the Fourth of July weekend, and the two men were sizing each other up as potential running mates. Each had his ain hesitations. Coming into the game, Trump had formed an opinion of the Indiana governor as prudish, stiff, and embarrassingly poor, co-ordinate to ane longtime acquaintance. Pence, meanwhile, had spent the primaries privately shaking his caput at Trump's campaign-trail antics, and had endorsed Senator Ted Cruz for the nomination. But as the 2 men played golf game, Pence asked what his chore description would be if they wound upwards in the White House together. Trump gave him the aforementioned respond he'd been dangling in forepart of other prospective running mates for weeks: He wanted "the most consequential vice president ever." Pence was sold.
Earlier flying out to New Jersey, Pence had called Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump adviser, whom he'd known for years, and asked for her advice on how to handle the coming together. Conway had told him to talk most "stuff exterior of politics," and suggested he show his eagerness to learn from the billionaire. "I knew they would enjoy each other'southward company," Conway told me, adding, "Mike Pence is someone whose religion allows him to subvert his ego to the greater good."
True to grade, Pence spent much of their fourth dimension on the class kissing Trump'south ring. You lot're going to be the side by side president of the United states, he said. It would be the honor of a lifetime to serve you. Afterward, he made a point of gushing to the printing about Trump'due south golf game. "He crush me similar a pulsate," Pence confessed, to Trump'southward delight.
The consensus among the campaign'due south pinnacle political strategists was that a Trump–Pence ticket was their best shot at winning in Nov. After a biting primary season, Trump's campaign had moved swiftly to shore up support from conservative Christians, who advisers worried would stay dwelling on Election Day. Trump released a list of potential Supreme Court nominees with unimpeachably pro-life records and assembled an evangelical informational lath composed of high-profile faith leaders.
One of the men asked to bring together the board was Richard Land, of the Southern Evangelical Seminary. When the campaign approached him with the offer, Land says, he was perplexed. "You practice know that Trump was my last option, correct?" he said. Just he ultimately accepted, and when a campaign aide asked what his first slice of communication was, he didn't hesitate: "Selection Mike Pence."
Nonetheless, as decision fourth dimension approached, Trump was leaning toward New Bailiwick of jersey Governor Chris Christie, a young man bridge-and-tunnel loudmouth with whom he had more natural chemistry. The candidate'southward advisers repeatedly warned that the "Bridgegate" fiasco would make Christie a liability in the general election. But they were unable to get through to Trump.
Then, on July 12, a phenomenon: During a curt campaign swing through Indiana, Trump got word that his airplane had broken downwards on the track, and that he would demand to spend the nighttime in Indianapolis. With nowhere else to go, Trump accepted an invitation to dine with the Pences.
In fact, according to ii former Trump aides, there was no problem with the plane. Paul Manafort, who was then serving as the campaign'due south chairman, had made up the story to keep the candidate in boondocks an actress day and allow him to be wooed by Pence. The gambit worked: Three days later, Trump appear Pence every bit his running mate.
On the stump and in interviews, Pence spoke of Trump in a tone that bordered on worshipful. One of his rhetorical tics was to praise the breadth of his running mate's shoulders. Trump was, Pence proclaimed, a "broad-shouldered leader," in possession of "broad shoulders and a big heart," who had "the kind of wide shoulders" that enabled him to suffer criticism while he worked to return "broad-shouldered American force to the world phase."
Campaign operatives discovered that anytime Trump did something outrageous or embarrassing, they could count on Pence to clean it up. "He was our top surrogate by far," said one old senior adviser to Trump. "He was this mild-mannered, uber-Christian guy with a Midwestern accent telling voters, 'Trump is a skilful homo; I know what's in his heart.' It was very convincing—you wanted to trust him. You'd be sitting there listening to him and thinking, Yeah, peradventure Trump is a good man!"
Even some of Trump's most devoted loyalists marveled at what Pence was willing to say. There was no talking betoken besides preposterous, no fixed reality too plain to deny—if they needed Pence to defend the dominate, he was in. When, during the vice-presidential contend, in early Oct, he was confronted with a barrage of damning quotes and questionable positions held past his running mate, Pence responded with unnerving message subject, dismissing documented facts as "nonsense" and smears.
It was the kind of operation—a blur of one-half-truths and "whatabout"s and lies—that could brand a good Christian queasy. But people close to Pence say he felt no conflict between his campaign duties and his religious behavior. Marc Brusk, a longtime adviser to Pence and a fellow Christian, told me that the vice president believes strongly in a scriptural concept evangelicals call "retainer leadership." The idea is rooted in the Gospels, where Jesus models humility by washing his disciples' feet and teaches, "Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be beginning must be your slave."
When Pence was in Congress, he instructed his aides to take a "servant's mental attitude" when dealing with constituents. Afterward, as the chairman of the Firm Republican Briefing, he saw his task every bit being a retainer to his swain GOP lawmakers. And when he accepted the vice-presidential nomination, he believed he was committing to humbly submit to the will of Donald Trump. "Servant leadership is biblical," Short told me. "That'south at the center of it for Mike, and it comes across in his relationship with the president."
Another close friend of Pence's explained it to me this way: "His faith teaches that you lot're under authority at all times. Christ is under God's dominance, human being is under Christ's authorisation, children are nether the parents' authority, employees are nether the employer's authority."
"Mike," he added, "always knows who's in charge."
On Friday, Oct 7, 2016, The Washington Post published the Access Hollywood record that showed Trump gloating about his penchant for grabbing women "past the pussy," and instantly upended the campaign. Republicans across the country withdrew their endorsements, and conservative editorial boards called on Trump to drop out of the race. Virtually alarming to the aides and operatives within Trump Tower, Mike Pence suddenly seemed at risk of going rogue.
Trump'due south telephone calls to his running mate reportedly went unreturned, and anonymous quotes began appearing in news stories describing Pence as "beside himself" over the revelation. One campaign staffer told me that when she was asked on TV the twenty-four hours after the tape came out whether Pence would remain on the ticket, she advert-libbed that, yes, he was 100 percent committed to Trump. She remembers walking abroad from the gear up and thinking, "I have no thought if what I simply said is true."
It'southward been reported that Pence sent Trump a letter saying he needed time to decide whether he could stay with the campaign. Just in fact, according to several Republicans familiar with the situation, he wasn't just thinking about dropping out—he was contemplating a coup. Within hours of The Mail's bombshell, Pence fabricated information technology articulate to the Republican National Committee that he was ready to take Trump's place as the party's nominee. Such a motility merely four weeks before Election Day would have been unprecedented—but the situation seemed dire enough to telephone call for radical action.
Already, Reince Priebus's part was being flooded with panicked calls from GOP officials and donors urging the RNC chairman to go rid of Trump by whatever means necessary. 1 Republican senator called on the party to appoint emergency protocols to nominate a new candidate. RNC lawyers huddled to explore an obscure legal mechanism past which they might strength Trump off the ticket. Meanwhile, a small group of billionaires was trying to put together money for a "buyout"—fifty-fifty going so far as to enquire a Trump associate how much coin the candidate would require to walk away from the race. Co-ordinate to someone with knowledge of the talks, they were given an answer of $800 million. (Information technology's unclear whether Trump was aware of this discussion or whether the offer was actually fabricated.) Republican donors and party leaders began buzzing near making Pence the nominee and drafting Condoleezza Rice equally his running mate.
Amongst the anarchy, Trump convened a meeting of his pinnacle advisers in his Manhattan penthouse. He went around the room and asked each person for his damage assessment. Priebus bluntly told Trump he could either drop out immediately or lose in a celebrated landslide. According to someone who was nowadays, Priebus added that Pence and Rice were "gear up to step in." (An aide to the vice president denied that Pence sent Trump a alphabetic character and that he ever talked with the RNC virtually becoming the nominee. Priebus did not respond to requests for comment.)
The furtive plotting, several sources told me, was not just an act of political opportunism for Pence. He was genuinely shocked by the Access Hollywood tape. In the brusk time they'd known each other, Trump had fabricated an endeavor to convince Pence that—beneath all the made-for-TV rant and bravado—he was a skillful-hearted man with faith in God. On the night of the vice-presidential debate, for instance, Trump had left a voicemail letting Pence know that he'd merely said a prayer for him. The couple was appalled past the video, however. Karen in particular was "disgusted," says a former campaign aide. "She finds him reprehensible—just totally vile."
Yet Pence might also take thought he glimpsed something divine in that moment of political upheaval—a parting of the seas, God's hand reaching down to brand his volition known. Marc Brusk told me that in moments of demand, Pence turns to a favorite passage in Jeremiah: "For I know the plans I accept for yous, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm yous, plans to give you hope and a future." Brusk said, "Mike believes strongly in the sovereignty of God, and knowing that the Lord has a programme for him."
Whatever God had planned for Mike Pence, yet, it was not to make him the Republican nominee that weekend. Trump proved defiant in the face of force per unit area from party leaders. "They thought they were going to exist able to get him to drop out earlier the 2d debate," said a sometime campaign adjutant. "Little did they know, he has no shame." Indeed, two days after the tape was released, Trump showed up in St. Louis for the debate with a group of Bill Clinton accusers in tow, ranting nearly how Hillary's married man had done things to women that were far worse than his ain "locker-room talk." The whole thing was a circus—and it worked. Past the time Trump left St. Louis, he had, in pundit-speak, "stopped the bleeding," and by the adjacent day, Pence was back on the stump. The entrada stabilized. The race tightened. And on the night of November 8, 2016, Pence found himself standing on a ballroom stage in Midtown Manhattan—silently, obediently, servant-leaderly—while Trump delivered the unlikeliest of victory speeches.
Back in Indiana, Pence's Trump apologia on the campaign trail surprised those who knew him. In political circles, there had been a widespread, bipartisan recognition that Pence was a decent man with a genuine devotion to his faith. Simply afterward watching him in 2016, many told me, they believed Pence had sold out.
Scott Pelath, the Democratic minority leader in the Indiana Firm of Representatives, said that watching Pence vouch for Trump fabricated him lamentable. "Ah, Mike," he sighed. "Ambition got the best of him." It'southward an impression that fifty-fifty some of Pence's oldest friends and allies privately share. As one onetime adviser marveled, "The number of compromises he made to get this chore, when y'all think about information technology, is pretty staggering."
Of course, Pence is far from the only conservative Christian to be accused of having sold his soul. Trump's early evangelical supporters were a motley crew of televangelists and prosperity preachers, and they have been rewarded with outsize influence in the White House. Pastor Ralph Drollinger, for example, caught Trump'south attention in December 2015, when he said in a radio interview, "America'south in such desperate straits—especially economically—that if we don't have most a chivalrous dictator to plough things around, I just don't recollect it'due south gonna happen through our governance system." At present Drollinger runs a weekly Bible report in the West Fly.
Only the president has also enjoyed overwhelming support from rank-and-file conservative Christians. He won an astonishing 81 percent of white evangelicals' votes, more than any Republican presidential candidate on record. And while his national approval rating hovers below forty percentage, poll after poll finds his approving rating amid white evangelicals in the high 60s. The fact that such an ungodly president could retain a firm grip on the religious right has been the source of much soul-searching—and theological argue—within the movement.
On ane side, at that place are those who argue that good Christians are obligated to support whatever leader, no matter how personally wicked he may be, who stands upwardly for religious freedom and fights sinful practices such as ballgame. Richard State told me that those who withhold their back up from Trump because they're uncomfortable with his moral failings volition "become morally accountable for letting the greater evil prevail."
On the other side of the debate is a smaller group that believes the Christians allying themselves with Trump are putting the unabridged evangelical movement at run a risk. Russell Moore, of the Southern Baptist Convention, has made this example forcefully. In a New York Times op-ed in September 2015, Moore wrote that for evangelicals to embrace Trump "would mean that nosotros've decided to join the other side of the civilisation state of war, that paradigm and celebrity and coin and ability and social Darwinist 'winning' trump the conservation of moral principles and a simply guild."
Moore and others worry that bourgeois Christians' back up for Trump has already begun to warp their ideals. Consider just one data signal: In 2011, a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that only xxx percent of white evangelicals believed "an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can withal behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional person life." By 2016, that number had risen to 72 per centum. "This is actually a sea change in evangelical ethics," Robert P. Jones, the head of the institute and the author of The Cease of White Christian America, told me. "They have moved to an ends-justifies-the means fashion of politics that would take been unimaginable before this last campaign."
Merely even every bit the debate rages on, there is one affair virtually all conservative Christians seem to agree on: Mike Pence. "He's an incredibly popular effigy," Moore told me. "Evangelicals who disagree almost all sorts of things still respect Mike Pence. Regardless of how they voted or what they recall most Trump, they feel a sense of identification with him, and trust in him."
Some prominent evangelicals take gone even farther to draw Pence's role—reverently invoking biblical heroes who aligned themselves with flawed worldly leaders to exercise God'due south will. I pastor compared Pence to Mordechai, who ascended to the right manus of a Western farsi rex known for throwing lavish parties and discarding his wife after she refused to appear naked in front of his friends. Pence has also fatigued comparisons to Daniel—who served a procession of godless rulers—and to Joseph of Egypt, the valiant servant of God who won the favor of an impetuous pharaoh known for throwing servants in prison when they offended him.
Pastor Mark Burns—a South Carolina televangelist who was among the first to sign on every bit a religion adviser to Trump—told me Pence's role in the assistants is like that of Jesus, who once miraculously calmed a storm that was threatening to sink the gunkhole on which he was traveling with his disciples. (Burns, who stressed that he was not equating Pence with the Savior, said Trump is represented in this analogy past ane of Jesus's more "foulmouthed" apostles.) "Mike Pence is there praying over the White Firm every day," Burns said. And in this tempestuous political climate, the success of Trump'south presidency may depend on those intercessions. "It takes somebody who knows when you're headed toward a storm to be there praying for you."
The religious right began reaping the rewards of Trump's victory most immediately, when the president-elect put Pence in charge of the transition. Given wide latitude on staffing decisions, Pence promptly set nigh filling the federal government with agreeing allies. Of the xv Cabinet secretaries Trump picked at the start of his presidency, viii were evangelicals. It was, gushed Ted Cruz, "the most conservative Cabinet in decades." Pence also reportedly played a key function in getting Neil Gorsuch nominated to the Supreme Court.
Pence understood the price of his influence. To proceed Trump'southward ear required frequent public performances of loyalty and submission—and Pence fabricated sure his inner circle knew that enduring such indignities was function of the job. Once, while interviewing a prospective adviser during the transition, Pence cleared the room and so they could speak privately. "Look, I'm in a difficult position here," Pence said, co-ordinate to someone familiar with the meeting. "I'm going to have to 100 percent defend everything the president says. Is that something you're going to be able to practice if you're on my staff?" (An aide to Pence denied this account.)
Trump does not always reciprocate this respect. Around the White House, he has been known to make fun of Pence for his religiosity. As Mayer reported in The New Yorker, he has greeted guests who recently met with Pence past request, "Did Mike make you lot pray?" During a conversation with a legal scholar about gay rights, Trump gestured toward his vice president and joked, "Don't inquire that guy—he wants to hang them all!"
When I asked Marc Brusque, who now serves as the White Firm director of legislative diplomacy, nigh these exchanges, he dismissed them equally good-natured razzing between friends. "I call up information technology's fun for him to tease Mike," Short told me, "but at the same time, the president respects him." Not everyone is then sure. When it was reported final Jan that the Pences would exist moving some of their family unit pets—which include 2 cats, a rabbit, and a ophidian—into the Naval Observatory, Trump ridiculed the menagerie to his secretary, according to a longtime adviser. "He was embarrassed past it; he idea it was so low class," says the adviser. "He thinks the Pences are yokels."
Pence's forbearance hasn't e'er yielded concrete policy victories for the Christian right, a fact that was highlighted during a skirmish over religious freedom early on in the Trump assistants. Social conservatives had been lobbying the president to issue a sweeping executive order aimed at etching out protections for religious organizations and individuals opposed to same-sexual practice union, premarital sexual practice, abortion, and transgender rights. The proposed guild was fairly radical, just proponents argued that it would strike a crucial blow against the militant secularists trying to drive the faithful out of the public square. At get-go, Pence'south office reportedly worked to build support for the executive order inside the White House—but the attempt was torpedoed when a draft was leaked to The Nation magazine, which warned that signing information technology would "legalize discrimination." In that location proceeded a noisy backlash from the left, and hasty backpedaling past the White House. By the time Trump got around to signing the gild, several months later, information technology was dramatically watered down.
Conservatives blamed Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner for gutting the club. Only co-ordinate to ane Trump acquaintance with noesis of the debate, Pence barely put upward a fight. The surrender infuriated Steve Bannon, who was and so serving as the chief White Business firm strategist. "Bannon wanted to fight for information technology," says the Trump acquaintance, "and he was really unimpressed that Pence wouldn't do anything." Merely perhaps Pence was playing the long game—weighing the risks of taking on Trump'south kids, and deciding to stand up downwardly in the interest of preserving his relationship with the president. Pence, after all, had his future to think about.
In an embattled White House, the question of the vice president's ambition for higher function is radioactive. When The New York Times reported last summer that Pence appeared to be laying the groundwork for a 2020 presidential bid, he denied the "disgraceful and offensive" story with theatrical strength. But Pence has shown that his next move is never far from his listen—and he's hardly the just i weighing the possibilities. One senior GOP Senate aide told me that pundits miss the signal when they speculate about what kind of scandal information technology would take for the president to face a serious defection from lawmakers of his own political party. "It'due south not a matter of when Republicans are ready to turn on Trump," the aide said. "It's nigh when they decide they're set for President Pence."
What would a Pence presidency look like? To a bourgeois evangelical, it could mean a glorious render to the Christian values upon which America was founded. To a secular liberal, it might await more like a descent into the dystopia of The Handmaid's Tale. Already, in some quarters on the left, it has become stylish to fret that Pence's fundamentalist faith and comparative political savvy would make him an even more "dangerous" president than Trump. He has been branded a "theocrat" and a "Christian supremacist."
There is, of grade, nothing inherently scary or disqualifying well-nigh an elected leader who seeks wisdom in scripture and solace in prayer. What critics should worry about is not that Pence believes in God, only that he seems so certain God believes in him. What happens when manifest destiny replaces humility, and the line betwixt faith and hubris blurs? What unseemly compromises get made? What means become tolerable in pursuit of an end?
On the night of May 3, 2017, members of the president'southward evangelical advisory board arrived for a private dinner at the White House. They were scheduled to appear the side by side day in the Rose Garden to cheer Trump on as he signed an executive gild nearly of them considered a disappointment. Instead of creating the far-reaching protections for believers that they had been hoping for, Trump's society merely made it easier for pastors to voice political opinions from the pulpit—a conspicuously self-serving have on religious freedom. Some social conservatives were already voicing their discontent. Ryan Anderson, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, called the order "woefully inadequate"; David French, a writer for National Review, dismissed information technology every bit a "sop to the gullible."
But inside the W Fly, the president's religion advisers were getting the full Trump experience. After dining on shrimp scampi and braised brusque ribs in the Blue Room, they were treated to a tour of the private residence. Trump led them onto the Truman Balcony, and waved off Secret Service agents who tried to stop them from taking pictures. The faith leaders pulled out their smartphones and snapped selfies, intoxicated by the VIP treatment. "Mr. President," Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, said at one point, "we're going to be your most loyal friends. We're going to exist your enthusiastic supporters. And nosotros give thanks God every twenty-four hour period that y'all're the president of the United states of america."
For many of the attendees, though, the almost memorable moment came when Pence stood to speak. "I've been with [Trump] alone in the room when the decisions are made. He and I accept prayed together," Pence said. "This is somebody who shares our views, shares our values, shares our beliefs." Pence didn't waste product time touting his own credentials. With this crowd, he didn't need to. Instead, equally always, he lavished praise on the president.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/gods-plan-for-mike-pence/546569/
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