Travels with Mike Pence

TO KNOW how the world aches for a more familiar America to return, it is enough to watch foreign leaders interact with Vice-President Mike Pence. In more normal times, Mr Pence would make an unlikely object of global fascination. Missionary-earnest and sternly conservative, he wears his loyalty to Donald Trump like a blank mask. There is no Trump provocation that the vice-president cannot explain away: usually in tones of mild, head-shaking disappointment, as if others lack the good sense to trust his boss. But even as Mr Pence defends his president and his America First agenda, he sounds enough like an old-school Reagan Republican—praising free-trade pacts, lauding NATO and chiding leftist strongmen for trampling the rule of law—that foreign allies cannot help but dream.