Various pieces of political advice may come in and out of vogue, over time, but one thing you can be sure of: never, ever trust someone with painted-on hair.
Case in point - Mike Pence, current #2 (in all senses of the word) in the Trumpster Fire currently leading America further into the Pit. The latest buzz on him, courtesy of the New York Times, has his advisers looking into a possible run in 2020.
He's not the only one, of course -- in a few months I expect every Republican Also-Ran with a website and a heartbeat to fling a hat into the ring. Hell, even perennial loser Kasich is edging that way.
"Disgraceful and offensive," he says. "Laughable and absurd."
Is it though? Consider the following.
1) Pence may be a lot of things, but he's not stupid.
2) He has to know what it means when there's at least two grand juries in action, a Senate that voted unanimously to stop his boss from recess appointing a successor to AG Sessions, and there's been s erious questions to lawyers about the subject of Presidential pardons.
3) And he has to be unnerved by how little enthusiasm his boss really has for the job, after only a few months on the job.
Shake all that up in the VP's tight little noggin, pour it into a glass, and you have a Women and Children First. It's a nice and zippy little drink you enjoy very damn quickly in the seconds before all hell breaks loose, and the rats leap over the edge and into the water, below.
Pence is no more rat than fool, though. He got his foot in the Executive Mansion, in spite of having a sad lack of what could be called Presidential-level charisma. Running now would be worse than surrender.
But he would be a fool to think his boss is going to last the next three and a half years before either getting nailed for something, being impeached, or giving the hell up after a particularly insane 4 am twitter storm. When that happens, he'll inherit the job.
And he'll want to stay on, because this chance will probably never, ever come again.
Who wouldn't look into a 2020 run, then? A damned fool.
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