Under Pence, the IPR became more provocative, adding social commentary to its otherwise dry menu of proposals on taxation and municipal services. In one paper, Douglas Kmiec, a law professor at Notre Dame, used the news that basketball star Magic Johnson had been diagnosed with HIV to argue that “the only genuine morality” in sex occurred in marriage. He went on to criticize President Bush for praising Johnson’s public statements on his condition. Under Pence, the IPR alleged “systemic corruption” at state universities based on a study of instructor salaries that erroneously included administrators and physicians at university hospitals. The author of the study complained that the IPR had released a draft that wasn’t ready for publication and gave it a title he felt was inaccurate. He told a local paper that because of this experience, he hoped to have “little or nothing to do” with the think tank in the future.
Seemingly modeled after the snide and provocative American Spectator, the Indiana Policy Review’s opinion pieces often reeked of derision and prejudice. Its writers seemed especially vexed by gay Americans’ demands for equal rights. In one piece, which included what was undoubtedly the most extensive, prurient, and graphic descriptions of sex acts ever printed in a “policy” magazine, retired colonel Ronald Ray insisted that “homosexuality is a grave threat to our national health and our national security” because it made people vulnerable to blackmail.2
Another essay published by Pence decried the idea that “gaydom be elevated from a pathological condition or mere sexual preference to the status of one of several natural human divergences such as hair or skin color.” (In fact, medical authorities had abandoned the idea that homosexuality was a pathology in 1973.) The magazine was also irked by efforts by the disabled to reach equal status, criticizing President Bush for supporting the Americans with Disabilities Act. The latter piece was credited to a “senior fellow” who had recently been a staffer at the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. The same author, who was called an economist but didn’t have a doctorate, was a frequent critic of public schools and argued forcefully for proposals that shifted tax dollars to private schools under the rubric of “choice” in education.3
In his own writing, Pence initially avoided controversies by taking people-pleasing positions. In one article, he defended native son Vice President Dan Quayle against those who would push him off the GOP ticket. In another, he advocated term limits for elected state officials and members of Congress. Term limits would reduce the power of entrenched incumbents like his nemesis Phil Sharp. (Pence did not consider the argument that long-serving members of Congress often use their seniority to benefit the folks back home.) When he eventually sharpened his focus, Pence aimed at an easy target—a local talk radio host named Stan Solomon. In a piece published in The Indianapolis Star, Pence criticized Solomon for making personal attacks and concluded he was a crank.
New to the Indiana airwaves, Solomon was a conspiracy-minded provocateur whose politics fit well with Pence’s but whose style couldn’t have been more different. Solomon said he believed the Central Intelligence Agency armed civil rights protesters and that the men who carried out the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City were part of a federal plot. He called Rev. Jesse Jackson a “pimp,” declared Anita Hill a “slut,” and said a local critic got his ideas “out of an enema bag.” He also theorized that the Holocaust occurred in part because “influential Jewish people started promoting as fact that homosexuality is just as acceptable as heterosexuality.” To keep himself safe, Solomon always carried a pistol.4
Solomon had a six-day-a-week outlet on a prominent Indianapolis station, WIBC. His job proved the moneymaking power of provocative radio personalities who energized both those who agreed with their views and those who were repelled. The trend toward this kind of on-air talk had been established by the nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh, whose acidic schtick was more sophisticated but no less pointed than Solomon’s. Among the imitators who arose across the country, Solomon was one of the most extreme and made an easy target for the outrage of those who wanted to position themselves as more moderate.
As he criticized Solomon, Mike Pence was starting his own broadcasting career at WXIR, a tiny station owned by the American Bible Radio Group and which was devoted to the broadcast of sermons and Christian music. In a short time, he moved to a bigger station that gave him a weekly show. Pence performed in a style that he admitted “rips off Rush Limbaugh.” Limbaugh’s record of stoking outrage and intensifying the political divide made him an odd role model for a man who had just published his “Confessions of a Negative Campaigner,” and Pence promoted right-wing views with an Indiana focus. Add the periodic publication of his own Mike Pence Report on politics—about 250 people paid the $19.95 per year to subscribe—and it was obvious that he was building a personal brand that competed with the Indiana Policy Review Foundation. By the end of 1993, Pence decided to leave the little think tank. The break was apparently hastened by a disagreement over founder Charles Quilhot’s increasing criticism of Senator Richard Lugar. A moderate in a GOP that was leaning ever more Right, Lugar wasn’t conservative enough for Quilhot, who called for the senator to resign. (This was the opening salvo in what would be a long assault on Lugar from his Right flank.) Pence objected to the attack, and by January 1994, he was finished as the boss at IPR, which he said was becoming too conservative for him. He was, apparently, a Lugar Republican.5
When The Mike Pence Show went daily in April 1994, the host said he didn’t expect to run for public office again. The “restraints on my ability to be candid are very frustrating,” said Pence as he wondered aloud whether he ever had the temperament for campaigning. In a newspaper interview, he seemed embarrassed by his performance as a candidate. “I don’t think there was any style of negative campaigning I didn’t use,” he confessed. The only campaign mistake he blamed on others was his use of the for-profit committee that paid his bills. He smelled something fishy in the fact that the law permitted these practices even though they were toxic in the minds of voters. “It’s one of those rabbit traps that the political classes laid for challengers,” he complained, and it taught him that politics was a game he would rather not play. Broadcasting was a career choice, he said, not a step toward another run. He said he wasn’t a “good and effective politician” and he felt that all his ambition for office had disappeared. “If I was trying to rehabilitate myself, this would be an interesting way to do it,” he allowed. “I’m just not.”
On the radio, Pence spent 180 minutes daily (minus commercials) sharing his views, interviewing guests, and taking calls from listeners. Folksy in a way Limbaugh could never be, Pence opened his show with the words, “Greetings across the waves of amber grain,” and he talked about everything from basketball to the weather, but his most frequent topics revolved around a bleak vision of American society.
“Our nation is in decline,” he said as he complained about abortion, teen pregnancy, and divorce. Where others saw economic factors—stalled wages, rising prices—requiring parents to work more and putting families under stress, Pence imagined that political liberals were to blame. In his mind, feminism wasn’t a struggle for equality but rather an attack on the way things should be. Social programs weren’t intended to address human needs but rather deliberate efforts to undermine families. “The epicenter of our cultural decline is the decline of the family,” said Pence. “Welfare regulation, illegitimacy, outcome-based education, too much government; all are directly related to the decline of the family.” (An approach that assessed students on their mastery of course materials, outcome-based education was backed by business leaders and many Republicans but then became a bogeyman for Christian conservatives who believed it undermined religion.)6
Radio Mike stood reliably on the Right and often sought to get ahead of whatever trends moved the GOP. When fellow Christian Right activist Newt Gingrich mounted a drive to become Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1994, Pence supported him on the radio. When Pat Buchanan ran w
ell in the 1996 Iowa caucuses, Pence ignored William F. Buckley’s denunciation of Buchanan as an extremist (because he had questioned the historical record of the Holocaust) to say he was “four square in the mainstream.” On the broadcast where he defended Buchanan, Pence also interviewed Chris Dickson of a local organization called Family First, whom he said “proudly falls into the category” of the Christian Right and thanked him for leaving his “horns and pitchfork” at home. Dickson’s main concern was America’s “moral decay,” which he said could be repaired by “conservative evangelicals.” Toward this end, he quizzed candidates on their positions, distributed literature, and ran two failed campaigns for local office. He didn’t like the press and sought to counteract its influence by purchasing airtime on a radio station where he broadcast his views and read from the Bible.7
Skepticism about the news media was a frequent topic for Mike Pence, who said that journalists “vilified” people who applied their religious convictions to politics. Of course, he was not above vilifying others for values that conflicted with his. He declared Dr. Jack Kevorkian “a monster” for assisting a dying woman’s suicide. And a news item about a female officer breaking a military rule against adultery led him to a discussion of the Ten Commandments, “the normalization” of adultery, and whether women should be permitted to serve. “I for one,” said Pence, “believe the seventh commandment contained in the Ten Commandments is still a big deal.” He couldn’t help but mock the woman involved in the affair as both a “grizzled feminist” and a “doe-eyed hapless victim.” He asked, “What could possibly be a bigger deal?” than her affair with a civilian man.
With pop and country music bumpers announcing the start and end of segments, Pence beckoned people to call 1-800-603-MIKE and leafed through the newspapers. As he gained confidence as a broadcaster, Pence tried out some impressions—he did a good Bill Clinton—and put some distance between himself and the likes of Solomon and Limbaugh, who, he said, took things too personally. His show was “infotainment,” he added. “I’m conservative, but not in a bad way.” Pence talked of Solomon as someone who lived in the “paranoid little tributaries” of politics.
Opposite as they were in style, Pence and Solomon were sometimes bonded on issues such as gays serving the military, and they were both outspoken in their hope that conservative Christianity would guide government officials. The main difference was that while Solomon ranted and railed, Pence expressed himself in an indoor voice. After the 1996 Republican National Convention, Pence lamented the low TV ratings and blamed them on appearances and speeches by “an endless line of pro-choice women, AIDS activists, and proponents of affirmative action.” The party needed to remember, he wrote, that “traditional Pro-Family conservatives make up the bedrock of modern Republican electoral success.”8
Solomon and Pence were also both temporarily employed by the same Rev. Gene Hood who had stormed the Miss Gay America pageant, been arrested at a women’s health clinic, and donated to Pence’s failed campaign for Congress. Hood, of the Independent Nazarene Church, controlled a string of Christian radio stations, including two in Indiana. One of his stations carried Pence in 1995 but dropped him when Pence refused to stop booking a guest named Harrison Ullman, who promoted more liberal-leaning views. “I want my show to be fair, civil, and open to all sides of an issue,” Pence had said. Solomon was on the same station as Pence and would remain with Rev. Hood for years despite both his political vitriol and personal attacks. Nothing Solomon said seemed to trouble Hood. Speaking of one local businessman, Solomon said, without offering any evidence, “He can’t keep his hands off very young girls.” When contacted by the press, Rev. Hood said he thought Solomon should “lay off that tacky stuff” but kept Solomon on the air for three hours nightly.9
At the more powerful WIBC, Pence was more Indiana than the state fair, promoting local institutions, from the Indianapolis 500 car race to Indiana University basketball coach Bob Knight. Though hotheaded, profane, and physically abusive, Knight was a living legend in Indiana thanks to three national championships. When players began leaving the team because they couldn’t adapt to Knight, Pence was among those who took the coach’s side. Within three years, after further complaints and video and audio evidence became public, Knight was fired for behavior deemed “uncivil, defiant, and unacceptable.”
Although Knight proved to be in the wrong and undeserving of support, Pence was on firm ground lining up behind him. For one thing, plenty of Hoosiers thought Knight’s success and his position of authority meant he could do what he wanted with his players. Besides, Pence was himself becoming such a comfortable presence with his audience that he didn’t have to worry much about any single comment. He was so well liked that when a station in Kokomo celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, Pence was brought in to do his show from the parking lot.
By the time he was broadcasting from a Kokomo parking lot, Pence was syndicated statewide on the Indiana Network, which was the property of Wabash Valley Broadcasting.
The tone of Pence’s broadcasts helped attract advertisers who made the show profitable. Pence’s income depended in part on the revenue, and he needed the salary to support a growing family. The Pences had always wanted children. However, in the first six years of their marriage, they had been disappointed by their inability to conceive. They had even tried gamete intrafallopian transfer, which is used by some Catholics to get around theological objections to procedures that involve fertilizing eggs outside the body.
GIFT, as the treatment is called, was not accepted by all Catholic authorities. Some objected to it on the grounds that it defied conception via the “marital act,” even though the semen was collected in a condom during sex. Despite their extraordinary efforts, the Pences didn’t conceive, and Karen would say she experienced a crisis of faith. Finally, after ending GIFT, she became pregnant at age thirty-four. A son, Michael Jr., was born in 1991. He was followed by two daughters named Audrey and Charlotte. Karen was no longer teaching, leaving her husband as the sole wage earner for the family. His prospects improved when his employer made him an offer to get into television.
Wabash Valley Broadcasting was owned by one of the wealthiest families in the country, the Hulman-George clan, which was also involved in real estate, finance, energy, and food processing. Its Indianapolis TV station, WNDY, was not affiliated with a major network. It aired mainly reruns of wholesome family shows. The station was a perfect fit for Pence, whose talk show was a mild-mannered version of national political roundtable programs like Meet the Press. It was taped once weekly and aired at odd hours, when it competed against the likes of Flipper, The Lawrence Welk Show, Teletubbies, and Barney and Friends.
On TV, Pence used humor to turn his cornstalk image into an asset. Introduced as “the man who would have been the next James Bond, if his mom had let him,” Pence worked hard to cultivate a connection with people who might share his perspective, which included a bit of anxiety if not resentment when it came to the world beyond Indiana. His first show, inspired by the debut of a racy new film called Showgirls, was set up as a battle between midwestern decency and the straw man of a depraved entertainment industry.
Titled “Hollywood vs. Indiana,” as if the film business had organized itself to hurt the people in Pence’s audience, the entire half hour amounted to an alarm occasioned by a movie that was so bad that hardly anyone went to see it and it ruined the career of its star, Elizabeth Berkley. The little controversy around Showgirls was stimulated by the fact that the perky, blond-haired Berkley was previously known for her part in the squeaky-clean TV show Saved by the Bell, which presented a saccharine version of high school life. In Showgirls, Berkley’s character, a stripper, was often nude or having sex of one sort or another. The contrast with her previous TV role was both intentional and disturbing for parents who had been happy for their kids to be fans of Saved by the Bell.
The panelists on Pence’s first TV show generally agreed with the host’s assault on Hollywood. Some call
ed for regulations to control film and TV. They didn’t seem to be aware that some of what was proposed had been tested before and found by courts to be unconstitutional. The high point of the program may have been Pence’s imitation of national talk show host David Letterman’s “Top Ten” list. In this version, Pence offered the Top Five Differences Between Indiana and Hollywood. Among them were “In Indiana, people with paranoid delusions get therapy; in Hollywood, they write scripts for Oliver Stone” and “In Hollywood, people think Dan Quayle can’t spell potato; in Indiana, people think Elizabeth Taylor can’t spell commitment.”
Setting aside the fact that Vice President Quayle actually misspelled potato on national TV and the elderly Taylor had been reduced to doing voice-overs for The Simpsons, Pence’s Top Five was a pale imitation. The self-deprecating part of his presentation was warm and even charming. The Us vs. Them flavor of the Hollywood bashing seemed purposely crude. Besides, Pence was an avid consumer of Hollywood’s products. He loved The Wizard of Oz, despite the feminist power of its main characters and the occult themes deployed by writer L. Frank Baum, who was a member of the pre–new age Theosophical Society. If he could find something beautiful in Oz, it was disingenuous to encourage a culture war between Hollywood and the Heartland. Supply and demand drove the production of films and television programs, and people in Indiana supplied some of the demand.
As on the radio, on TV Pence rarely wandered beyond Indiana, but when he did, he was likely to fix his attention on Bill Clinton, who, as president, was a favorite target of right-wing broadcasters. Unlike Limbaugh and others, Pence tried to confine his critique to policy, but then came the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal and impeachment proceedings. Pence expressed revulsion whenever Clinton was mentioned, and when Clinton was acquitted, he became convinced that the problem was too much democracy. According to Pence, things went awry with the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, which, in 1913, required that United States senators be elected and not appointed. The amendment had been adopted in response to vote-buying and bribery scandals. The unfortunate result, in Pence’s view, was that senators were too concerned about public opinion and thus wouldn’t vote to strip a popular president of his office. He thought more presidents had been more vulnerable to impeachment under the previous system (history showed this was not true) and that this was beneficial.10
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