What if Mike Pence isn't really trying to win?

A radical theory of Pence-ism.

(Mike Pence)

I’ve been thinking about Mike Pence a lot lately.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I have never really understood why he’s running for president in 2024 given that the writing is on the wall that he has no chance.

He is too Trump-y for the establishment of the party (such as it still exists) and not nearly Trump-y enough for the base of supporters who still idolize the former president. In fact, that second group of voters actually hate Pence — and comprise the bulk of the GOP these days.

So, this was a bid doomed from the start. But even by those decidedly low expectations, Pence’s path has been a rocky one. Nationally, he is now in 4th place, having recently been passed by young Trump acolyte Vivek Ramaswamy. In early states things are even worse — as evidenced by a poll out of New Hampshire Tuesday that showed Pence taking just 1% (yes, you read that right) of the vote.

All of this — maybe not the specifics but the broad outlines — were apparent to anyone paying even a little bit of attention to the 2024 race.

Which means that it was obvious to Pence too. For all of his aw-shucks public persona, Pence has shown throughout his career that he is a savvy political operator. You don’t get into House Republican leadership, get elected governor of a state and wrangle your way onto the national party ticket by accident.

So, Pence HAD to know this was coming. Again, he might not have known he’d be polling below Perry Johnson (who!?!) in New Hampshire in August, but he knew it wasn’t going to be good.

And by not good I mean that there was no path — realistically — for him to come anywhere the nomination.

But, he still ran. And, of late, I am thinking that I know why.

The answer lies in how Pence has responded to the news that Donald Trump has been indicted by special counsel Jack Smith for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election.

At the core of that case is the pressure campaign Trump ran on Pence as he tried to cajole the then vice president to overturn the electoral college votes that would make Joe Biden president.

Pence, in the wake of the indictment, has been outspoken about both his actions on January 6 and the pressure he came under from Trump.

“I was clear with President Trump throughout all the way up to the morning” of January 6, he said on Fox News earlier this month. “It wasn’t just that they asked for a pause. The president specifically asked me and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me to literally reject votes.”

Which is much more explicit than Pence had been about what, exactly, he was asked to do — and how he reacted.

What if then Pence is running not to win but to reclaim his good name for the sake of the history books? To make sure that Trump is not the only candidate in the 2024 field telling a story of what happened in the days and weeks leading up to January 6, 2021. To make sure that there is a counter-narrative out there that tells the true story, the one for the history books?

If you see Pence’s candidacy not through the short-term lens of this presidential race but through the longer term lens of history, it starts to make more sense.

Pence isn’t running to win — not really. He’s running to make sure that when the history of what happened in the final days of the Trump administration is written, he is the — or at least a — hero of the story.

Which — sidebar — raises an interesting question: Is Pence actually a hero? He did his duty — Constitutionally speaking — on January 6, 2021 when lots of other people including the president of the United States were urging him not to.

But, he had doubts about doing the right thing. (Witness the Dan Quayle conversation.) And he did spend four years standing at Trump’s side — literally — while the president sought to erase norms and practices decades in the making.

I think I am with Jonathan V. Last on this — that, when all is said and done, Pence is a hero of that day (and of democracy.) Here’s JVL on that point:

But ultimately, I find Pence’s heroism in the performance of his duty too great to wave away. He faced physical and professional risk on January 6; his career, his life, and the lives of his family were imperiled. He risked all of that to follow the law. It is nice to think that we all would have done the same, but I’m not sure. And I am sure that the overwhelming majority of Pence’s fellow Republicans would not have.

I think that’s right. Pence was put in a terrible position and did the right thing, not the easy thing. Which, well, ain’t easy.

And I think that making sure people know that — especially Republicans — is what Pence’s presidential campaign is really about. This is a campaign for the historical record, to ensure that Pence’s side of the story gets told.

Now, in the near term, Pence’s doubling down on his righteous behavior on January 6 dooms him in a presidential primary where the majority of Republicans don’t believe that Trump lost the election.

But, Pence is betting on the idea that in the long arc of history there will come a time when the Trumpists aren’t ascendant — and what he did on January 6 is lauded not castigated.

See, winning or losing — very likely losing — is sort of besides the point for Pence. This is about how history remembers Pence — and this campaign is about making sure he has his say.