Who Is Mike Pence, and Why Does Donald Trump Want Him to Be Vice President?

Donald Trump has finally chosen a vice presidential candidate, and his name is Mike Pence. Pence, as most people are just learning, is the Republican governor of Indiana best known for his role in last year's controversy over a bill that appeared to make discrimination against gays legal in the state.

Despite that brief, ignominious moment in the national headlines, Pence is probably the safest, most boring choice Trump could have made for a running mate—a stable, dyed-in-the-wool conservative who's concerned-dad-who-just-has-a-few-gosh-darned-questions tone is a stark contrast with the noisy left-of-center bloviating going on at the top of the ticket.

Of course, if you ask the Republican Establishment, Pence's boringness might be just what Trump needs to shore up the grassroots-conservative wing of the conservative base—a branch of the party that Trump is looking to win over as he heads into a potentially rocky Republican National Convention next week.

Despite having opposite vibes, though, Trump and Pence are not entirely at odds. The Indiana governor is a former talk-radio host who once claimed to be "Rush Limbaugh on decaf," and as such loves to talk, much like his new boss. And in a move Trump would find very familiar, Pence partly funded his own 1990 campaign for the House of Representatives—which he didn't win.

Both Trump and Pence also have a past history of supporting Democrats, and of taking political positions that are all over the map ideologically. Back in 2014, the Federalist even went so far as to call Pence a "technocratic progressive," although in recent years, he has shifted more sharply to the right, particularly on social issues.

Both men also have a history of saying, well, weird shit. In one anti-big-government screed on his congressional campaign website, archived in 2001, Pence declared that "smoking doesn't kill;" in another, he mistakenly wrote that George Washington was a Republican. And in a strange rant about pop culture, also archived in 2001, he claimed that the movie Titanic was popular because the sinking of the titular ocean liner symbolized American moral decline.

For the most part, though, Pence oozes recognizable, old-fashioned conservatism that might help ease the GOP's fears that Trump is driving the party's station wagon off a cliff. Pence is well known for his evangelical faith. He also has the support of perhaps the only moral force more important to Republicans than Jesus: the Koch Brothers, whose political group, Americans for Prosperity, absolutely adores the tax cuts Pence managed to get passed in Indiana, according to Politico.

On social issues, Pence's positions are slightly to the right of the Republican mainstream. Earlier this year, he signed a drastic new abortion law in Indiana that, among other things, requires women who get abortions to pay to cremate their fetuses.

But it's his opposition to gay rights that has been the social issue to earn Pence his reputation. It's a position that dates back to his 12 years in Congress. In 2000, 15 years before signing Indiana's anti-gay religious freedom bill, Pence declared his opposition to any federal funding for HIV and AIDS patients, if they "celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus," instead favoring programs intended to change "sexual behavior."

In his days as a congressman, Pence also opposed the addition of hate-crime legislation based on sexual orientation to a defense bill in 2009, saying, "This will have a chilling effect on religious expression, from the pulpits, in our temples, in our mosques, and in our churches. And it must be undone." He also attempted to amend Indiana's constitution to outlaw gay marriage in 2014, even though his fellow Indiana Republicans felt like existing anti-gay marriage laws were enough, according to theIndianapolis Star.

If there's one obstacle getting in the way of party unity at this point, it's that Pence is not exactly a Trump fanatic. While he has supported Trump since the latter locked up the GOP nomination, Pence endorsed the far more socially conservative Ted Cruz back in the heat of the party's 2016 primary. Pence has also been an outspoken critic of some of Trump's policy proposals, tweeting in December that "calls to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. are offensive and unconstitutional." As a congressman, Pence also supported the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump talks about constantly, referring to it as "perhaps in the history of the world, the worst trade deal."

Pence also supports the Trans Pacific Partnership, a deal Trump calls "a rape of our country" and plans to dismantle if he takes office. So the new running mates will probably need to come to some sort of meeting of the minds on that one if they win.

At this point, there is still a little time. On Thursday evening, the Trump campaign said that, in the aftermath of the deadly attack in Nice, it would postpone the press conference where Trump was expected to formally introduce Pence as his No. 2. This morning, the announcement was made.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.