Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton is asymmetric warfare. The showdown between Mike Pence and Tim Kaine Tuesday night will be, for the first and only time in this campaign, a symmetric warfare matchup, with a governor and former lawmaker going against a lawmaker and former governor.
But everyone knows the Pence-Kaine showdown will really be about Trump and Clinton. And with Donald Trump under 24/7 attack from the Clinton camp, the Democratic Party, and much of the media, Mike Pence will be the man under pressure Tuesday night at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.
How will Pence deal with it? First of all, he has prepared. A lot. He’s been working since the convention, enlisting a former Trump rival, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, to play Kaine in the debate preps. He has done mock debates. He has gone through four big binders of material multiple times, plus a bunch of videos.
In other words, Pence has done the old-fashioned, conventional-style debate preparation that Trump eschewed. And remember, Pence’s prep is on top of his dozen years in the House of Representatives, with service on the Foreign Affairs, Judiciary, and Agriculture committees, plus three years in the Indiana governor’s office.
But Pence had to prepare for more than questions on jobs, national security, immigration, Obamacare, and other issues. He knows that he must also be ready to be quizzed, or attacked, on virtually every controversial thing Donald Trump has said in the course of a long campaign. That’s something the Foreign Affairs committee did not prepare its members to do.
On that score, Pence has been doing his prep right out in the open. Since the GOP convention, he has done a lot of press, a lot of television — the Sunday shows, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, all of them. In those interviews, he has often handled questions that were really intended for Trump.
For example, last month, Pence appeared with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who assumed the role of Clinton surrogate for a few questions about white nationalists.
“There are some supporters of Donald Trump and Mike Pence who — like David Duke for example, and some other white nationalists — who would fit into the category of deplorables, right?” Blitzer asked.
“I’m not really sure why the media keeps dropping David Duke’s name,” Pence answered. “Donald Trump has denounced David Duke repeatedly. We don’t want his support and we don’t want the support of people who think like him.”
“So you’d call him a deplorable?” Blitzer asked. “You would call him that?”
“I’m not in the name-calling business, Wolf,” Pence answered.
The exchange led to a slew of headlines saying, “Mike Pence declines to call David Duke ‘deplorable.'” But Pence gave a solid and definitive answer — “We don’t want [Duke’s] support and we don’t want the support of people like him” — that a debate audience, as opposed to journalists, might well find persuasive.
The bottom line is, Pence has not shied away from hostile interviews. He knows how the game works in this campaign. And he knows the game will be on in Farmville.
Unlike the man at the top of the ticket, Pence has worked with one team of advisers this whole campaign. They are the ones helping him prepare for the debate. It’s been a thorough process — again, unlike the top of the ticket.
None of that guarantees Pence will win. Tim Kaine has his strengths. But if things go his way Tuesday night, Pence has an opportunity not only to win, and not only to help a Republican ticket that has had a hard week. He has an opportunity to show his boss how it’s done.
