Donald Trump selects Indiana Governor Mike Pence as VP, by Clyde Wilson.

First, [a Republican presidential candidate] must be presentable and respectable—someone you would consider a good neighbor and would never violate the standard of American Niceness. He should look presidential …. He must not have any taint of “extremism,” i.e., must never have resisted any leftist pressure.

He must be lacking in any ideas or principles, able smoothly to deliver meaningless Republican boilerplate (“compassionate conservatism,” “No Child Left Behind,” etc.) He must be completely without any intellectual distinction or force of character, either of which might alarm the voters with lack of a moderate and responsible persona. The Republican Party has long specialized in the dumb but nice (Dan Quayle, Bush minor, ad infinitum).

Having established all these desirable characteristics, I declared in 2015 that I had found the perfect Mr. Republican: “Pence of Indiana,” the perfection of an Establishment Republican empty suit, who had declared himself boldly for “family values” and then run away at the first enemy probe.

hat-tip Stephen Neil