“If you know the Pences, you know they’ll always try to discern where they’re being called to serve,” Marc Short, Pence’s former chief of staff, told me. “And I don’t think that is dependent on who else is in or not in the race.”

A 2024 Pence campaign looks futile no matter the scenario. If Trump runs, he’ll rally the same MAGA zealots who refuse to believe he lost the last election. And if Trump opts out, Pence isn’t his natural successor; he may have spoiled any hope of inheriting the Republican base when he defied Trump on January 6. Scanning the Republican universe, it’s hard to detect a glimmer of a Pence-for-president movement of any sort. Which leaves GOP operatives asking a version of the same question: What in the world is Mike Pence thinking?

Sarah Longwell is an anti-Trump Republican strategist who has led dozens of focus groups since the 2020 election with hard-core Trump voters, reluctant Trump voters, and 2016 Trump voters who switched to Joe Biden last year. “Pence doesn’t do well with anybody,” she told me. People make faces when she mentions Pence’s name, faces that convey a collective nah. Or maybe meh, she said, thinking it over. But the impression they leave is obvious enough, she added: “Not interested.”