WHILE THE PRESUMPTIVE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE WAS HARD AT WORK attempting to heal the lacerations suffered in his primary, Democrats were still swinging knives.
The contest to succeed President Obama atop the Democratic Party was underwhelming. It drew only six declared candidates, three of whom withdrew before the voting began. Of the remaining group, Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, promptly exited the race after a distant third-place finish in Iowa.
That left just two contenders for the nomination: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Everyone in politics recognized that the two parties had been systematically weakened since the turn of the century. What no one could have predicted was that the two candidates who most energized the party bases in 2016, Trump and Sanders, did not actually belong to the parties.
Though Sanders caucused with the Democrats during his quarter century in Congress, first in the House and later in the Senate, he was an independent and self-described socialist, a left-wing version of the erstwhile GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul: a ruffled, doctrinaire, septuagenarian zealot. Much like Paul, whose brand of strident libertarianism struck a chord with portions of the post–George W. Bush Republican Party, Sanders initially seemed more energized by influencing the post-Obama Democratic Party’s direction rather than winning its nomination.
And then, the familiar flaws of his opponent resurfaced.
More than any figure in American political life—more than Obama, who had helped birth the Tea Party, and more than her own husband, who had been impeached—Clinton had a knack for eliciting congenital hatred from the right. It dated back several decades to her time as First Lady, and the perception of her complicity in all her husband’s scandals dating back to his days as the governor of Arkansas. Her approval ratings peaked after the president admitted to a sexual relationship with a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, but even then, many conservatives viewed her as dishonest and politically calculating.
Clinton went on to be popular and highly effective as the junior senator from New York. She was also well liked during her tenure as secretary of state, with a 66 percent approval rating that topped Obama’s own standing. Even so, and yet again, Clinton found herself under fire from the right: her failed “reset” with Russia; her conflicts of interest related to the Clinton Foundation; her response to the terrorist ambush that killed four Americans in Benghazi; and, as the House GOP’s Benghazi probe uncovered, her use of a private email server to conduct government business.
Underscoring all these vulnerabilities was the most basic of political defects: a failure to connect with people. It had been a defining moment of the 2008 primary when Obama, smirking during a debate, remarked, “You’re likeable enough, Hillary,” highlighting the charisma gap between the rival candidates.
Bernie Sanders was no Barack Obama, but like the forty-fourth president, he had tapped into something unique on the left. Sweating through his oversize suit, blades of white hair shooting in every direction, jabbing a finger in the air and talking of the yuge gap between the one-percenters and the rest of the country, Sanders was the Doc Brown of the Democratic Party, and the issue of economic inequality was his flux capacitor.
He became a cult hero to the progressive base. Clinton couldn’t hope to match his raw enthusiasm, but she boasted the one thing Sanders lacked: support from within the party institution. Democratic nominating contests had come to rely heavily on so-called superdelegates, the elected officials and party heavyweights given automatic votes at the party’s convention. Clinton’s virtual monopoly on superdelegates angered Sanders supporters and fueled allegations of a fixed election, even though she won nearly four million more votes and would have prevailed on the strength of her regular delegate count versus his.
A defiant Sanders remained an active candidate all the way through the final primary contest on June 14, well after Clinton’s victory was assured, and he did not endorse her until July 12.6
The divisions exposed by their unexpectedly competitive and prolonged race loomed large as the Democrats prepared for their convention in late July. She was the prohibitive favorite heading into the general election; Trump lacked the raw numbers to win a high-turnout election. What he did have, however, was a passion in his base that Clinton could only dream of.
The flame that Trump carried—populism, nationalism, nativism—was beginning to light up the entire Western Hemisphere. Over the next several years, far-right parties advocating strict immigration crackdowns and protectionist economic policies took Europe by storm, some sweeping into power and others becoming the primary opposition voice in national governments.
The surest sign of the revolutionary times: On June 12, two days before the conclusion of the Democratic presidential primary, residents of the United Kingdom stunned the global community by voting to leave the European Union. “Brexit,” as the move was dubbed, represented to some a return to sovereignty; to others, it was a misguided rejection of the century’s geopolitical realities.
Brexit was strongly opposed by the White House. Unsurprisingly, it had a staunch ally in Trump.
RIGHT AROUND THE TIME FALWELL JR. WAS POSING IN FRONT OF THAT cover of Playboy, the news reached Pence: Trump was seriously considering him for the vice presidency.
A month earlier, Pence’s longtime pollster, Kellyanne Conway, had visited Trump Tower for lunch with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Having spent the previous year leading a pro-Cruz super PAC, Conway was now a free agent. Kushner was keen on bringing her aboard and asked Conway who she thought made the most sense as his father-in-law’s running mate.
Conway replied that it wasn’t about “who,” but rather, “what,” and laid out her criteria: someone with appeal in Middle America, someone trusted by conservatives, someone who added stability, not excitement—“because we’ve got all the excitement we need”—to the ticket. She was making the case for Pence, just not by name.
When informed soon after that meeting that Trump’s campaign wanted to vet him, Pence scoffed. No two human beings could have less in common, the governor joked to friends. Pence was a lifelong free-trader; Trump wanted to rip up NAFTA. Pence supported a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants; Trump had floated the idea of a “deportation force.”7 Pence was a devoutly religious midwesterner who refused to attend alcohol-related functions without his wife or work alone in a room with female staffers; Trump was a thrice-married Manhattanite who worshipped at the shrine of his magazine covers.
And yet, as time passed, the governor had grown more intrigued. The wholesome, aw-shucks, milk-drinking routine mastered by Pence belied the beating heart of a shrewd and ferociously ambitious politician, and he saw in Trump someone who had achieved a preternatural connection with the electorate, channeling voters’ anxieties in a way he had never witnessed. The longer Pence watched, the more he gravitated toward this source of power.
There was also the matter of self-preservation. Pence’s reelection was looking bleak: Public polling showed the race neck and neck, but private surveys conducted that spring showed the governor’s numbers looking dreadful all across the state. The religious liberty debacle had cost Pence a shot at the White House, and now it might cost him a second term. If Trump might rescue him from his predicament in Indiana, was the governor in any position to refuse?