Piety & Power by Tom LoBianco

Author:Tom LoBianco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

PENCE ADVANCES HIS POSITION, MAYBE?

That fall of 2014, President Barack Obama flew to Southwest Indiana to tout manufacturing investments.

The trip by Obama was auspicious for a number of reasons—he had won the state in 2008, part of a remarkable turn for a Democrat, which hadn’t won Indiana since Lyndon Baines Johnson ran in 1964. And his first trip as president was to Elkhart, Indiana, just outside South Bend, where he trumpeted the stimulus bill as a remedy for the state’s ailing RV manufacturing industry. But by 2012 that political love affair had soured: in the wake of the Tea Party uprising, Obama avoided Indiana altogether; he was viewed as a liability that Indiana Democrats were quite glad to have stay away.

In October 2014, with Obama entering the final years of his presidency and no big-ticket races up in Indiana, the fires had cooled enough for Obama to return. On October 3, Obama flew in to celebrate National Manufacturing Day, with a visit to Millennium Steel in Princeton, Indiana.

Pence waited to meet Obama on the tarmac, although he had no plans of joining Obama for the event. He wasn’t there to support him; he was there to lobby Obama on expanding Medicaid in Indiana. Pence reviewed his notecards as he sat in the holding room, waiting for Obama to land. The talking points were no different from the arguments he had made in public speeches and letters to the president before. But Pence studied them nonetheless. Then as Obama strode off the plane, Pence met him on the tarmac and welcomed him to Indiana. Then he delivered his rote talking points—Obama listened politely. There was nothing special in the words, but that’s not what Pence had been studying up on. The television crews rolled and, far away from earshot, all they picked up were images: Mike Pence was standing up to Obama! Or at least that’s the way it appeared. Pence didn’t jab any fingers, but the governor looked firm and confident. Then, after Obama left for his event, Pence stuck behind and held an impromptu press conference—mission accomplished. Pence may have fumbled at their last head-on meeting in January 2010, but this time, four years later, he used the cameras to his advantage and it worked.

Even if Pence hadn’t fully committed to running for president, he did know what he had to do if he did want to run, and that was keep building out his network of donors. Two thousand fourteen proved a good opportunity. Pence and Christie were just two of a handful of Republican governors not on the ballot that year. Christie had just won his own reelection bid the year prior, and Pence wouldn’t face reelection until 2016. With their peers preoccupied by their elections, the two formed the core of the RGA’s fund-raising efforts. There may have been some sore feelings after Pence’s big ask on Mary Pat Christie’s birthday back in 2012, but they had all washed away in the heat of the election cycle.

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