Veteran shock-jock delivers his listeners another jolt
Indianapolis, Sunday,
Is Mike Pence (62) trying to be the next president of the United States? Certainly the 48th Vice President of the USA is getting closer and closer to being a candidate for the post in the 2024 Republican primaries and he doesn't seem to be trying to make up with his former running mate, Donald Trump (75) - far less waiting for the ex-President to make up his own mind about a new run.
It's known that Pence recently opened a brand new office in downtown Washington, Columbia - inching closer to a possible White House run even as his standing worsens with former President Donald Trump and his base of supporters.
Who is Michael Richard Pence?
Born in Colombus, Indiana, on June 7, 1959, Pence is a Gemini, a sign associated with indecisiveness, impulsive behavior and unreliability. Indeed, his first steps in politics didn't augur well: attempting to run for Congress in 1988 and 1990 he lost both times to his Democrat rival.
Back then, Pence presented himself as a young lawyer on the rise, an 'outsider' challenging a longtime Democratic congressman. But in the midst of the ferocious campaign came scandal.
Campaign finance records revealed Pence had been using political donations to pay off his personal bills! Not merely the mortgage on his house (which is bad enough) but also his credit card, groceries, golf tournament fees and even the odd bill for his wife! At the time, this wasn't actually illegal. But it looked pretty grubby and it certainly made Pence's strategy of portraying the incumbent as snorting funds from the political trough seem rather hollow.
The lesson Pence drew from this PR disaster though is an unusual one: in an essay headed "Confessions for a Negative Campaigner" he vowed to always keep to positive messages from then on. Pence changed political gear to become the host of his own talk show, with himself behaving (as he put it) like "Rush Limbaugh on decaf". Imagine that! The show was wildly popular and was syndicated a few years later, before transferring to TV as a morning show. It is this stellar media career that was the background to his becoming a congressman and appealed to Donald Trump in 2016 when he picked Pence as running mate. Trump being, of course, himself more of a media personality than a standard politician.
The former Vice President's ramp-up comes as Trump appears to be making good on his declaration to Pence that "I don't want to be your friend anymore." That quote, first reported this week, is attributed to Trump in a forthcoming book by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
So could a Mike Pence presidential candidate surprise everyone? Is he a genuinely reformed political character - the VP who, by respect for the truth was obliged to go against President Trump in refusing the block accreditation of the 2020 election? Or is he the Mike Pence who allegedly played a key role in the plot to pressure Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joe Biden?
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