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Did Trump Just Make a Huge Mistake?
It was a clear Indiana day last spring, and Gov. Mike Pence was at a podium watching his presidential ambitions disappear. Days earlier, Pence had signed the controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a bill that many claimed would have allowed businesses to use religion as an excuse to discriminate against customers from the LGBT community. Now a pride of national reporters—not just the statehouse regulars—had descended on the Indiana State Library to grill him about the imbroglio that would all but end the speculation around his run.
Only months before, Pence had been seen as a unity Republican candidate for 2016, the kind of fiscal and social conservative who could knit together the Koch and the Dobson wings of the party, the free-marketers and the family-values camp. He was “Tea Party before it was cool,” as he once put it. Some even compared him to Ronald Reagan. Like the 40th president, Pence, the 57-year-old son of an Irish Catholic gas station manager was folksy, funny, media-friendly and usually quick with a quip.
On this day, though, Pence would encounter a far more hostile audience than he was used to. His advisers expected him to clean everything up handily. “I’ve never seen somebody who was so good at going to an interview, and be briefed before the interview, and then who could digest the basics in a quick amount of time and nail the key points,” Marc Short, his former chief of staff in Congress, would later recall.
But for the second time in three days, Pence’s talent as a communicator abandoned him when it counted. The trouble began before he even spoke, when live mics picked up the comically deep breaths of a man obviously readying himself for a painful experience. In his remarks, Pence said the controversy surrounding the bill was a mere “perception” problem, saying “this law has been smeared,” then in almost the same breath asked lawmakers to bring him a fix that week. Did he stand by the bill or didn’t he? Nobody could tell. If he was “proud” to sign the law, as he had said days earlier, what about it needed fixing? A potential national star had fumbled a prime-time slot—and hurt himself at home, too. By that November, his approval rating had dropped 15 points, from 62 percent to 47 percent.
Only months before, Pence had been seen as a unity Republican candidate for 2016, the kind of fiscal and social conservative who could knit together the Koch and the Dobson wings of the party, the free-marketers and the family-values camp. He was “Tea Party before it was cool,” as he once put it. Some even compared him to Ronald Reagan. Like the 40th president, Pence, the 57-year-old son of an Irish Catholic gas station manager was folksy, funny, media-friendly and usually quick with a quip.
On this day, though, Pence would encounter a far more hostile audience than he was used to. His advisers expected him to clean everything up handily. “I’ve never seen somebody who was so good at going to an interview, and be briefed before the interview, and then who could digest the basics in a quick amount of time and nail the key points,” Marc Short, his former chief of staff in Congress, would later recall.
But for the second time in three days, Pence’s talent as a communicator abandoned him when it counted. The trouble began before he even spoke, when live mics picked up the comically deep breaths of a man obviously readying himself for a painful experience. In his remarks, Pence said the controversy surrounding the bill was a mere “perception” problem, saying “this law has been smeared,” then in almost the same breath asked lawmakers to bring him a fix that week. Did he stand by the bill or didn’t he? Nobody could tell. If he was “proud” to sign the law, as he had said days earlier, what about it needed fixing? A potential national star had fumbled a prime-time slot—and hurt himself at home, too. By that November, his approval rating had dropped 15 points, from 62 percent to 47 percent.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/mike-pence-vp-donald-trump-indiana-214054#ixzz4EW0Asntz
8 replies
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There has to be another reason why Trump is waffling now
Thanks: Samantha Bee
rocktivity
