Indiana Gov. Mike Pence provides renegade Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump his best link to Ronald Reagan, a disciple of the Gipper who has championed small government and a White House that stays out of people’s business.
What’s more he was talking about making America great again when Trump was just beginning to identify with the Republican Party.
“You get government under control; you get government out of the way; then America will come roaring back. And America will be the story again,” he told me before leaving Washington to run for governor in 2012.
Congressman Mike Pence at Hillsdale College from Mike Pence on Vimeo.
At the time, Pence described himself as part Reagan, part John F. Kennedy.
He recalled that as a boy, he became interested in the presidency and started a memory box filled with stories about JFK. The social conservative even surprised the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy by revealing that he kept a bust of JFK in his office because he appreciated the moderate positions of the senator’s brother.
But it is Reagan he aligns his politics closest to. He called Reagan “the last president in my lifetime to really model a traditional American presidency.”
Before leaving Washington where he was a top conservative leadership official, Pence gave speeches on the presidency and condemned President Obama for being too pushy and demanding of how he wanted people to act. He also hit Obama for being in the public eye too often, always quick with a comment.
In a much-studied 2010 speech to Hillsdale College, for example, he said that Obama was stretching the traditional boundaries of the office and isn’t worthy of it.
“The current administration is the most egregious example of excess,” he said, accusing Obama of treating the nation like “a dog whose duty is not to ask why … but simply to obey.”
Pence, if chosen the GOP running mate, will also give Trump a stronger voice on social conservative issues such as life and marriage, issues that he believes can’t be overlooked even in an election driven by the economy.
Back when he considered a 2012 presidential bid, for example, he took issue with then-Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels who suggested a truce on social issues to focus instead on the economy.
Pence told me, “To those who say we should simply focus on fiscal issues, I say you would not be able to print enough money in 1,000 years to pay for the government you would need if the traditional family collapses.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
