The New Yorker has taken the most un-NYer person alive, Mike Pence (A man so wooden that termites salivate when he enters a room), and profiles him. We presume they do this as some sort of lesson of what we may get when (?!) Trump is removed from office.

We present some clips:

• Pence, who has dutifully stood by the President, mustering a devotional gaze rarely seen since the days of Nancy Reagan
• Joel K. Goldstein, a historian and an expert on Vice-Presidents who teaches law at St. Louis University, refers to him as the “Sycophant-in-Chief.”
• Pence exudes a low-key humility, but, McCawley told me, “he’s very ambitious, even calculating, about the steps he’ll take toward that goal.”
• There was so little to do in the way of entertainment, (his brother) Gregory Pence recalled, that “we sometimes got in the car with our parents on Friday nights and followed after the fire truck.”
• Mike Pence’s childhood nickname: Bubbles, because “he was chubby and funny.”

Mike ‘Payola’ Allen writing the Axios morning email thingie alerts us to a couple of passages in the article (which I have not finished reading) that might be considered warnings that Bubbles is exactly what we think he is:

• “Two sources … recalled Trump needling Pence about his views on abortion and homosexuality. During a meeting, … [a] legal scholar had said that, if the Supreme Court did so, many states would likely legalize abortion on their own. ‘You see?’ Trump asked Pence. ‘You’ve wasted all this time and energy on it, and it’s not going to end abortion anyway.'”
• “When the conversation turned to gay rights, Trump motioned toward Pence and joked, ‘Don’t ask that guy — he wants to hang them all!'”
• “Marc Short, the head of legislative affairs in the Trump White House, credits Pence for the Kochs’ rapprochement with Trump. ‘The Kochs were very excited about the Vice-Presidential pick,’ Short told me. ‘There are areas where they differ from the Administration, but now there are many areas they’re partnering with us on.'”
• Over the fireplace in the Vice-President’s residence, he has hung a plaque with a passage from the Bible: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'”

UPDATE: Over at Share Blue, there is another Bubbles-related news bit:

Mike Pence traveled to the reddest district in Virginia Saturday to headline a rally for GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie, where was he was greeted by a half-empty room.

Rally organizers had said they expected a turnout of about 1,200 people at the event in Washington County, VA, which Politico referred to as “one of the few politically safe regions of the state to bring a Trump administration official.”

But reality did not meet expectations.

In an embarrassing turn of events, only about 400 people showed up for the rally, which was held at the Washington County fairgrounds…

Perhaps the only thing more embarrassing than the sparse crowd at Saturday’s rally is the fact that Trump wasn’t even invited because he’s considered too politically toxic.

And the paltry attendance adds further proof to the cratering support for this administration, even in the reddest corners of the country.

Cross-posted from Mock Paper Scissors