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Pence is helping Biden make the transition more normal. But their cooperation has risks for each.

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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I will never be able to have an respect for him,, but hopeully he will do the right thing on his way to the dustbin of history

When Vice President Pence takes his seat near Joe Biden at the inauguration on Wednesday, he will be symbolically turning his back on President Trump’s baseless assertion of a stolen election and creating the powerful image of a peaceful transfer of power — an image his boss has sought to upend.

That comes after Pence last Thursday called Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris to congratulate her, offering her Air Force Two to travel to the inauguration, a courtesy Biden extended to Pence four years ago. Most dramatically, Pence on Jan. 6 rejected efforts to disrupt Congress’s certification of the election results, making him the target of a violent mob as he formalized Biden’s win.
Watch: Pence announces Biden’s win
At a time when big factions of each party view the other as contemptible, Biden and Pence are haltingly cooperating to shore up the traditional exchange of power. It’s a dynamic helpful to both, as Biden works to enhance his legitimacy with Republicans and Pence seeks to regain credibility after the Trump years.
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President-elect Joe Biden’s Inauguration is happening amid a pandemic, security threats and tension between the shifting administrations. (The Washington Post)

William Kristol, who was Vice President Dan Quayle’s chief of staff, said cooperating with Biden lets Pence shape his post-Trump political brand. “Is there a market for ‘civilized Trump acquiescence but not totally crazy’ conservatism? Probably,” Kristol said. “Playing that middle ground — civilized Trumpism with a civil face — isn’t a bad place for him to be, really.”
And for Biden, the Pence link lets him argue that he’s not naive to embrace bipartisanship. “He wants to say that Trump is an aberration both for the country and for the Republican Party,” Kristol said. “From the point of view of his governance, it is good for making that case.”
If the dynamic is helpful to both figures for the moment, it is also fraught. Many Democrats still despise Pence for enabling what they see as Trump’s destructiveness for four years and do not want Biden to help rehabilitate him. Pence, meanwhile, hopes to curry favor among the GOP base and potentially challenge Biden in 2024, so working with him now could carry a cost.
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Republicans who had echoed President Trump’s false election claims suddenly distanced themselves after a pro-Trump mob breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. (The Washington Post)

The two leaders have never been personally close. But as Trump refuses to acknowledge his election loss, their relationship has quietly become critical — and may be even more so in the coming months if Trump continues to rile up his followers by declaring that he was cheated.
Despite faithfully backing even Trump’s most incendiary actions for four years, Pence in recent days has taken on the traditional role, eschewed by Trump, of representing an outgoing administration, for example traveling to California and New York this weekend to bid farewell to military troops.
Biden and McConnell defy Trump after long subservience
Four years ago it was Biden who was the outgoing vice president, welcoming Pence as he took office. He offered Pence help settling into the vice-presidential residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory, and he continued calling regularly to check on Pence, aides to both men said, until he ran into trouble with liberals for calling Pence “a decent guy” in early 2019.
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They already knew each other by then, having overlapped in Congress for eight years before Biden became vice president. During the Obama administration, Pence joined the GOP House leadership and then became governor of Indiana.
The differences between the two men are evident. They’re separated in age by 17 years — Pence is 61, Biden 78. In Congress, they served in different chambers and different parties, battling on everything from the Iraq War to gay rights, putting them in the same newspaper articles but rarely in the same room.
But they shared courtesies over the years, stemming from a mutual respect for institutions, allies of both men said. During the departure of a president determined to shatter norms, that commonality is suddenly crucial.

“Pence is a gentleman, and he takes the office and the decorum seriously,” said Olivia Troye, a former aide to Pence who left the Trump administration over concerns about its handling of the pandemic and later appeared in an ad endorsing Biden. “At the inauguration, I have no doubt that he will be respectful. That is just the kind of man Pence is. He is not the kind of man who throws tantrums.”
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Trump, in contrast, plans to skip the ceremony, making him the first outgoing president to boycott his successor’s inauguration since Andrew Johnson declined to attend President Ulysses S. Grant’s swearing-in in 1869. Instead, Trump is expected to fly to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Wednesday morning.
Allies of both men now wonder whether Pence will step into the role traditionally occupied by former presidents, especially if Trump is a pariah in his post-presidency or actively works to undermine the Biden administration. That could mean, for example, joining with former presidents to support Biden in moments of national crises.

“I would love to see him fulfill that role, because I think he’s great at it,” said one former Pence aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a former boss. “It’s something that the country needs.”
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One person close to Biden, who has not spoken to the president-elect about Pence, said the next few days will further clarify Trump’s standing. Any additional violence from pro-Trump agitators, for example, would make it even more attractive to lean on Pence, the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
Jen Psaki, Biden’s incoming White House press secretary, said Biden and Pence have not spoken in recent days. Devin O’Malley, a spokesman for Pence, declined to comment for this story.

Many Democrats are loath to give Pence credit after what they consider years of sycophancy to Trump.
“He can’t shed four years of intimate Trumpism by 30 seconds of doing some of the right things,” said Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N. J), who contracted covid-19 after sheltering in the Capitol with Republican lawmakers refusing to wear masks. Citing Trump’s policies on race, coronavirus and other issues, she said of Pence, “He earned every bit of our skepticism and reluctance to trust him on any level.”
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Transportation Secretary-designate Pete Buttigieg memorably summed up Democrats’ scorn for Pence when he was running for the Democratic nomination, calling him “a cheerleader for the porn star presidency.”

Amy Walter, national editor of the Cook Political Report, said the recent assault on the Capitol changed the landscape for the vice president. “When you have people running through the Capitol saying, ‘Hang Mike Pence,’ you don’t have a lot to lose in saying, ‘I’m going to work with the incoming administration,’ ” Walter said.
In presiding over the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress that certified the 2020 election, Pence reprised a role that Biden himself played four years ago. Biden had also faced a party with raw emotions, though not violent ones. As presiding officer, Biden swatted aside several objections and instructed the sergeant-at-arms to remove protesters from the gallery.
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