The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence

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. [em](Aug.) [/em]