While giving a speech at a National Rifle Association event in Indianapolis a few days ago, Mike Pence was booed as he took the microphone. A very awkward moment, to be sure.
The 2024 Republican hopeful and former VPOTUS is now scrambling to carry out damage control, as one might expect. But his case is likely hopeless. As a Republican candidate for president, it’s hard to do worse than that.
In these hyper-partisan times, politicians get booed, harassed, and hounded all the time, of course. But Mike Pence was not driven from the grounds of an American university by shaggy, leftwing student hooligans with weight and hygiene issues. He was not harried by climate change fanatics or frothing pro-abortion fetishists screeching “My body, my choice!” Mike Pence was booed at the podium of an NRA event not only in his home state, but in the state where he used to be the Republican governor.
Mike Pence would likely be a long shot even if our political environment were, well…saner. He has a notable charisma problem, and that’s been a major handicap for any national candidate since the advent of televised debates.
Commercial television has been around since the late 1940s. Political debates, though, did not become a televised phenomenon until 1960, when Kennedy debated Nixon. Prior to their televised debate, Nixon was ahead in the polls. But Nixon’s sweaty, awkward, twitchy performance gave the youthful, relaxed, and photogenic Kennedy a solid advantage. We might say that JFK was our first president to be elected by television.
Mike Pence’s first obstacle, then, is that he can’t run for president in 1920 or 1948, when the charisma of a national candidate was much less of a factor.
Pence’s more immediate handicap, though, is that he is a moderate, at a moment in time when the most activist voters of both parties prefer extremist whackos. For evidence of this trend, I need mention only two names: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
What will the general election of 2024 bring? If the current electorate gets what it deserves, we’ll face another stark choice between the bumbling incompetence of Joe Biden (with all his loony, far-left camp followers coming along for the ride), and the temperamental volatility of Donald Trump.
We’ll see. But one thing is for certain, where the next U.S. presidential election is concerned: Mike Pence will not be anywhere near the podium on Inauguration Day 2025. He will not last long in the Republican nomination race of 2024, either.
-ET