Joe Biden would have the biggest problem. His entire campaign is based on the premise that his deep experience and pragmatic politics promises to dispatch the aberration that is Trump and return us to normalcy. If Pence had already returned America to normalcy, that would leave Biden without his main argument.

No longer would the president be a bombastic demagogue who slathered crude economic populism, vicious anti-immigrant sentiment and creepy affection to the world’s worst dictators on top of the standard Republican mix of tax cuts, social conservatism and Federalist Society-approved judges. Instead, if Pence reverted to past form, we would have a conventional Republican. The Pence of old worried that Russian President Vladimir Putin was dropping “a new Iron Curtain … down the spine of Europe.” He was a reliable vote for free-trade deals. He even once tried to hammer out an immigration reform compromise that would include a guest worker program. If Pence ended Trump’s anxiety-inducing, market-rattling behavior on the world stage, swing voters in the general election might look past his retrograde views on social issues and breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Also keep in mind that if Pence were president, it would be because enough Republican voters finally had enough, and gave Republican senators the latitude to oust Trump on a bipartisan vote. We wouldn’t be the same polarized country we are right now.