United States | Lexington

Travels with Mike Pence

Watching the vice-president explain this White House to Latin America

TO KNOW how the world aches for a more familiar America to return, it is enough to watch foreign leaders interact with Vice-President Mike Pence. In more normal times, Mr Pence would make an unlikely object of global fascination. Missionary-earnest and sternly conservative, he wears his loyalty to Donald Trump like a blank mask. There is no Trump provocation that the vice-president cannot explain away: usually in tones of mild, head-shaking disappointment, as if others lack the good sense to trust his boss. But even as Mr Pence defends his president and his America First agenda, he sounds enough like an old-school Reagan Republican—praising free-trade pacts, lauding NATO and chiding leftist strongmen for trampling the rule of law—that foreign allies cannot help but dream.

To us, says an official from one of four Latin American countries hosting Mr Pence from August 13th to 18th, this vice-president somehow represents all the institutions of America, not just this White House. He sounds like the senators we meet, and we know he is liked by many Republicans in Congress. Also, says the official, lowering his voice, Mr Pence could be president one day. Given the legal and political briars that entangle Mr Trump after just seven months in office, that is a fair point.

A Trumpian controversy was awaiting Mr Pence at his first stop, Colombia. That country’s centrist president, Juan Manuel Santos, had every interest in giving his American visitor a cordial welcome. Mr Santos needs allies as he nurses a fragile economy and implements an unpopular peace agreement with FARC rebels. Mr Santos hosted Mr Pence and his wife Karen for an open-air dinner in the port city of Cartagena, in the grounds of a coral-stone mansion. Blue macaws and high-flying frigatebirds wheeled overhead. Modest trade deals were announced: America will accept more Colombian avocados, Colombia will buy more Yanqui rice. Mr Santos endorsed American calls for tougher sanctions on Venezuela’s leftist rulers, as they slide closer to dictatorship. But as a politician in a continent haunted by memories of American-backed coups, and stalked today by left-wing populists, Mr Santos had no choice but to address comments made by Mr Trump, a few days earlier, suggesting that options for restoring democracy in Venezuela include military force. “Friends have to tell each other the truth,” Mr Santos told his guest. A military option should not “even be considered”.

In reply, Mr Pence relied on a favourite gambit: selectively quoting Mr Trump to make his boss sound more like Reagan than Rambo. Indeed, Mr Trump said that America has “many options for Venezuela”, soothed Mr Pence. But the president remains confident that, working with Latin American allies, peaceful ways will be found to restore Venezuelan democracy. What the world heard was “resolve and determination” from Mr Trump, the vice-president added, in case anyone thought they had heard America’s president indulging in blustering war-talk that makes no military sense, gives Venezuela’s rulers a propaganda win, and makes life harder for his own allies. As night fell over Cartagena Mr Pence reached for a line that he uses often to explain Trumpian foreign policy. Under President Trump, the government will always put American’s security and prosperity first, he said: but “America First does not mean America alone.”

The electoral mandate won by Mr Trump weighs heavily on Mr Pence. At each overseas stop the former governor of Indiana, congressman and conservative radio host works to convey to foreigners the anger of Trump voters back home. In Colombia he talked of illegal drugs poisoning American children and instructed his host: “Mr President, this must end.” For television viewers back home, he explained why faraway crises matter, carefully casting a failed Venezuelan state as a threat not just to democracy, but to American borders and security, as chaos sent murderous drug gangs and migrants north.

Yet Mr Pence also strains to present Trump’s America as a benevolent superpower, untempted by isolationism. In Cartagena he bowed his head, eyes closed, as Mrs Pence led a prayer circle with Venezuelans taking refuge at an American-backed evangelical church. “The president sent me here with a message of compassion,” Mr Pence told them, visibly moved. Nobody was awkward enough to ask how that squares with his boss’s fear-mongering against refugees, or frequent praise for despotic strongmen elsewhere in the world. In Buenos Aires Mr Pence praised President Mauricio Macri for lowering trade tariffs, without mentioning Mr Trump’s threats to slap tariffs on imports. Mr Pence hailed Argentina’s role in the World Trade Organisation, though his boss calls that body “another one of our disasters”.

Swagger fixes everything

If pressed on such contradictions, Mr Pence has an answer: overall, Mr Trump’s tough talk makes the world safer. Citing the recent UN Security Council vote to sanction North Korea, and pan-American efforts to put pressure on Venezuela, Mr Pence claimed in Buenos Aires that Mr Trump had “brought the kind of broad-shouldered leadership to the world stage that has been lacking for too long, and the world welcomes it.”

Loyalty is a noble quality. Public loyalty is also key when working for Mr Trump, a vengeful and insecure man. Both facts may explain why Mr Pence quotes the president constantly and deferentially stresses the “high honour” of representing him.

Travel lifts the mask a bit. Like many nationalists, Mr Trump does not greatly care that foreign countries have politics, too. Mr Pence is more alive to questions of foreign opinion, which is why he labours to present the world with the most constructive version of his boss. That very act of selective editing reveals something of the vice-president’s own preferences. More than his boss, he seems to believe in certain core principles. But to what end? Access to power means little if unaccompanied by courage.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "The quiet American"

Donald Trump has no grasp of what it means to be president

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