Mike Pence lived in my house in Washington DC for several months before he became Vice President in late January 2017.
When I moved into that same house soon afterwards, I asked the neighbours what he was like. None of them could tell me. They said the Vice President-elect did not engage with them, he kept to himself and he remained an enigma to those in my street.
Four years later, most Americans would agree that Pence is still an enigma. The 61-year-old former Governor of Indiana has been the most low profile Vice President since Dan Quayle in the early 1990s.
At each turn and on every issue, Pence has been the loyal deputy to the outsized personality of his boss Donald Trump, making sure he never outshines the President or disagrees with him in public.
To his critics he has been sycophantic to the point of blandness, yet to his supporters Pence has been exactly what Trump wanted him to be – an unwavering supporter of the President’s cause.
This is why Pence now stands one of the few survivors in an administration where senior personnel are hired and fired at a furious pace.
But there is growing speculation that Pence harbours ambitions for the presidency in 2024, which is why his keynote speech on day three of the Republican Convention was a rare chance to step out of the shadows and into the national spotlight.
His speech at Fort McHenry, the patriotic site of a battle in 1812 that was the inspiration for the lyrics of the national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner, was the best of his career. It may not have been the sort of fiery oration that made the nation sit up and ask “is that a future president?”
But it was strong because it hit the mark that the Republicans are trying to hit on law and order, on the economic recovery and the defence of freedoms while also giving Joe Biden a heavy whack for being too left wing and weak on tackling crime.
Pence resisted the temptation to use the occasion to push his own political views which are more socially and religiously conservative than the President.
Pence’s evangelical Christian faith is a dominant force in his life and he says he never eats or drinks alone with a woman who is not his wife.
Pence’s speech also didn’t let onto the fact that he is more of an old fashioned-hawk on foreign policy and is more fiscally conservative, which was what Republicans once were in the days before Trump.
Although Pence has been criss-crossing the US for many months campaigning for Trump, he rarely gets much media attention because he has perfected motherhood soundbites that don’t make news.
The only time Americans saw him frequently was during the short period earlier this year when Pence headed up the nightly briefings of the White House’s coronavirus Taskforce. But Trump ended those in April, and when he started them again several months later it was Trump, rather than Pence, who was the frontman.
In June there was a brief flurry of speculation that Trump may drop Pence as his 2020 running mate after a Wall Street Journal opinion piece suggested Trump would be better off with former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley as his running mate. But it never happened, not least because it would have been a bad look for Trump to drop Pence for the 2020 campaign after he had shown complete loyalty over the past four years.
Pence’s low profile is such that if Trump loses to Biden in November, he may disappear from the American political landscape with barely a trace, with little chance of a revival in four years time.
But if Trump wins a second term, Pence will clearly be in the frame for a presidential tilt in 2024, although he is likely to face stiff competition from the likes of Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo and Marco Rubio amongst others.
This was Pence’s best speech and he has another chance to grab attention before the November election when he debates Biden’s Vice Presidential running mate Kamala Harris on October 7.
Maybe then Americans will finally start to unlock the enigma that is Mike Pence. I know my neighbours will be watching.
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia
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