The Shadow President

July 9, 2018
Beneath his Hoosier niceness, the 48th vice president is an ambitious power-seeker who may usher in a theocracy, according to this overwrought exposé. Journalists D’Antonio (The Truth About Trump) and Eisner (MacArthur’s Spies) style Mike Pence as the power behind Donald Trump’s throne, “a regent... humoring a temperamental boy king” while insinuating followers into government positions and awaiting an Oval Office vacancy. Meanwhile, they warn, he has become “perhaps the most powerful Christian supremacist America has ever seen,” building a coalition of evangelicals and business libertarians who want something like the society in The Handmaid’s Tale, only deregulated. But their research belies their alarm and reveals Pence to be a run-of-the-mill conservative Republican, favoring tax cuts, small government, and impotent culture-war gestures. (An abortion-restriction bill he signed as governor of Indiana was struck down, and he watered down a measure allowing Indiana businesses to refuse service to gay weddings after protests.) The authors spend much effort trying to link Pence to the controversy surrounding the Trump administration’s Russia ties and come up only with question marks; otherwise his “shadow presidency” consists mainly of banal pro-Trump speeches and junkets. There’s not much new information in this portrait of Pence, just exaggerated dudgeon.

Starred review from August 1, 2018
Award-winning, veteran journalists collaborate on a well-researched and moderately toned yet searing biography of Vice President Mike Pence (b. 1959).D'Antonio (A Consequential President: The Legacy of Barack Obama, 2017, etc.) and Eisner (MacArthur's Spies: The Soldier, the Singer, and the Spymaster Who Defied the Japanese in World War II, 2017, etc.) begin with Pence's middle-class, Catholic, politically moderate Indiana upbringing before tracing how the ambitious, polite young man turned toward increasingly exclusionary politics during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. As for the religious component, Pence's mainstream Catholicism morphed into evangelical zealotry with a heavy emphasis on the inerrancy of the Bible. Pence came to believe that God decided the path of every human; while still a student, he also adopted the notion that God would elevate him to the presidency. Of course, at such an early age, he did not foresee that serving as vice president to Donald Trump would constitute part of God's plan. When that became reality much later, Pence tolerated Trump's vitriol and scandals as preordained by God, simply a means to an end. The authors devote the final third of the book to the Trump-Pence partnership. In the middle sections, they document Pence's marriage; an unfocused, meandering work history during his 20s; and impatient attempts to join the House of Representatives by defeating an entrenched Democratic incumbent. Pence lost twice before starting a career as an Indiana radio personality, which, a decade later, provided the name recognition he needed to become a Congressman. The authors provide copious evidence of Pence's lackluster legislative accomplishments in Washington, D.C.; nonetheless, Pence won the governorship of Indiana in 2012. He demonstrated a low level of interest in actually governing, and he was often evasive or heartless when confronted with hot-button issues. Trump showed little interest in Pence's legislative record, focusing instead on Pence's patina of inoffensive behavior, pleasant physical appearance, and faith-based zealotry.Producing a biography of a living, controversial politician is always difficult. D'Antonio and Eisner have succeeded in this well-documented, damning book. Cue the outrage from Sean Hannity et al.

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