Editorial? Advertising? Call it « Comtent »

Today’s publishers offer a range of marketing opportunities to brands, going way beyond traditional advertising and sponsorship. Branded content — especially branded video — and native advertising (they’re not exactly the same thing) help marketers to reach an audience by presenting not just a product message, but an immersive, engaging experience which can be just as enjoyable as regular editorial content.

The revenues, of course, help the poor publishers too.

But imagine the opportunities for publishers if all and any editorial content could function as branded content — « comtent, » some might call it . In other words, let’s say that I mentioned a product in this story, as a natural part of the story. After all, we do that all the time here at DMN when discussing marketing tech platforms and solutions. Equally naturally, I add a link. But if a reader follows that link and buys the product, there’s no benefit to DMN (believe me), because there’s no attribution and no revenue sharing agreement.

Skimlinks, the London-based affiliate marketing platform, is rewriting that scene. And in doing so, it’s going beyond affiliate marketing. That’s what founder and CEO Alicia Navarro says: « What we’re talking about is content, driven by an editorial voice. It can make money, even though that’s not why it was written. » And « comtent, » of course, is Skimlinks’ term for it.

Traditionally, most of the publishers involved in affiliate marketing have been what Navarro calls « pure affiliates. » The raison d’être for their existence, and for the content they published, was to generate revenue by driving sales. And the infrastructure was complex. Publishers had to sign up with affiliate networks, train editors to create content based around links, and keep the links up-to-date, and have a system in place to collect revenues from retailers. « Mainstream publishers just didn’t bother, » Navarro explains. « It was too much effort; the reward just wasn’t in it for them. »

But according to Navarro, even pure editorial content —  not branded content or native ads — can be a content marketing channel. Here’s how.

Skimlinks sets out to make affiliate-type revenue easily available to mainstream publishers. Signing up to the Skimlinks program automatically plugs publishers into a broad affiliate network. Skimlinks adds product tracking to editorial content, and conversion generates commissions. It’s a lingering revenue stream for publishers: Navarro points out that for the top 25 publishers in the scheme, 40 percent of revenues are generated by content over 60 days old. Organic search is the publisher’s friend.

What’s more, the eco-system is monetized by brands based on product sales, not by the publishers. Skimlinks’ roster of around one and half million websites encompasses not just mainstream but major publishers — think Condé Nast, Buzzfeed, the Huffington Post, and The Independent — as well as a « very long tail. » 

That’s only half the story. The other half is the data.

The Skimlinks eco-system aggregates what Navarro characterizes as « an immense amount of data along the whole commerce/content journey. » Skimlinks automatically tracks impressions and clicks and classifies them based on product meta-data (from a universe of something like 1.6 billion uniques per month). It’s enough data to drive meaningful insights into readers with shopping intent as opposed to casual readers: insights Skimlinks packages and sells as their Audiences product. « It turns out that we can predict [intent], » says Navarro, « and at a very granular level. »

The data is pooled, with well over 90% of domains within the eco-system opting into the co-op (representing some 80% of impressions). In practice, what opting in means for a publisher is licensing Skimlinks to sell their (anonymized) data to other members of the co-op. Why would publishers do this? Even a major publisher, says Navarro, occupies a tiny part of the Internet: « What is their audience doing elsewhere? »

In theory, readers should benefit from this infrastructure as much as publishers and brands. It creates the possibility of pre-targeting with commercially meaningful content, rather than increasingly annoying re-targeting. Traditionally, marketers have been torn between large-scale brand campaigns, leading to high exposure, but with an uncertain impact on sales; or re-targeting, which « works well and is measurable, » Navarro says, but is much smaller in scale.

« There’s a big space in between, » she concludes, where marketers can find scale and performance; a space Skimlinks’ Audiences is intended to stake out. Brands or agencies can add Audiences segments directly to their DMPs or DSPs. Publishers who opt into the co-op receive the data automatically. « It’s the future of the industry, » says Navarro. « It’s really exciting. »

Despite being head-quartered in London, most of Skimlinks’ business is here in the United States. But with customers in the UK and the rest of Europe, and some in Asia too, data privacy regulations are front-of-mind. Navarro describes Skimlinks as « actively involved » in the community discussing the future of data privacy. Her view is that it’s the responsibility of the publishing side, not the adtech side, to obtain consents for data usage, as the publisher is customer-facing. That’s the position she’s advocating for with the IAB, but it’s a developing situation.

THE PROGNOSIS

Pour yourself a mojito, because some pretty serious Obamacare repeal drama is on the way. (Photo by Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post)

The Senate GOP leadership is trying to rally enough steam to vote on an Obamacare overhaul in the 14 days left in June. But potential roadblocks are piling up both publicly and behind-the-scenes that could easily derail its efforts. 

For one thing, the Congressional Budget Office would need time to score final legislation. And the parliamentarian would need to give the thumbs-up to its individual parts. Which leads us to the biggest reason a vote this month is possible but very, very hard: Republicans don’t even have a bill yet.

“Join the crowd, I’m in the same category,” Senate Finance Chairman Orrin G. Hatch told (Utah) a reporter yesterday who complained that they don’t know the details of the health-care plan Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is cooking up in time for the July 4 recess (read more on McConnell’s calculations here). 

Bloomberg’s Sahil Kapur documented the Hatch moment on Twitter:

Going into the week, Republicans had high hopes they’d be able to rally quickly around a bill. McConnell presented a range of options to members during a lunch on Tuesday. The same day, a dozen or so Republicans shared a meal with President Trump to discuss the efforts. Senators are feeling heavy pressure to move an Obamacare revamp quickly before August recess hits and the whole, complicated effort becomes even harder.

« Impassioned policy disputes have flared among some GOP senators in large group meetings at which McConnell has floated ideas from the drafting process, » my colleagues Kelsey Snell and Sean Sullivan report. « But those disputes have not deterred him from the goal of a floor vote before the July 4 recess, said the Republicans familiar with the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about private conversations. »

McConnell and Co. hedged their aggressive timeline in public this week. But, as McConnell sees it, the policy options have all been vetted. « Now, the difficult decisions about what to put in and leave out of the final bill are all that remain, » Kelsey and Sean write.

But those decisions might be more than difficult — they might be fatal to the possibility of passing a health-care bill at all. The more candid senators readily admitted this week that divisions persist.

“We’ve got a divided caucus,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told reporters this week. “I listen avidly at lunch as we go over the same arguments over and over and over again.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price admitted yesterday that he hasn’t seen what Republicans are working on, even though his staff has provided technical assistance. “I haven’t seen any legislative language,” Price told the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies. 

Matt House, communications director for Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), noted Price’s comments at the hearing:

The 52 Senate Republicans must work as a pack if they ever want to pass a health-care bill with a simple majority (and a likely tie-breaking vote from Vice President Pence). Only two of them can roam free. At this point, it’s a given that libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky will be one of the free-rangers. Yesterday, Paul all but said he’d vote against the bill, criticizing its likely inclusion of a refundable tax credit to subsidize private insurance.

“I think we shouldn’t have new entitlements that will go on forever in a Republican plan to fix health care,” Paul told reporters. “We can’t pay for what we already have: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”

Assuming Paul’s out of the picture, the question then is who the other defector would be. Many have viewed Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) as the most likely moderate to buck her party. But Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is also a strong possibility after comments she made to Vox’s Dylan Scott. “I want greater access and lower costs,” Murkowski said. “So far, I’m not seeing that happen.”

And as members continue to debate amongst how much of the Affordable Care Act they should try to repeal and the breadth of insurance subsidies to enact in its place, things are also getting privately contentious.

Democrats and Republican on the Budget Committee are still at odds over whether the Senate can even use the budget reconciliation bill sent over from the House. Republicans say it’s got the green light, while Democrats are still contending that the parliamentarian could rule the whole thing out of order.

And then there’s the sticky question of whether individual components of the House bill can pass what’s known as the “Byrd rule” governing what can fit within a budget bill. Democrats and Republicans must meet to argue their case before the parliamentarian, but that meeting hasn’t even occurred yet. The outcome holds big ramifications for what the Senate can include in its legislation.

“There have been no bipartisan meetings or decisions from the parliamentarian on Bryd Rule issues yet,” a spokesman for Budget Democrats told The Health 202.

To be fair, a June vote on a health-care measure isn’t out of the realm of possibility. But the window is closing fast. And if Senate Republicans don’t wrap up their efforts to produce legislative text and get a CBO score until July, that leaves limited time to reconcile a bill with the House before August recess.

So pour yourself a mojito and get ready for Summer of Obamacare Repeal Drama. It could be long and twisty.

Congressional aid Zack Barth who was injured in the shooting poses with the Republican team during the Congressional baseball game. (Photo by Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post)

SHOOTING UPDATE: 

–House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) remains in critical condition as of Thursday evening but has improved since Wednesday, according to MedStar Washington Health Center. Lobbyist Matt Mika’s condition, previously critical, has improved to serious, according to George Washington University Hospital.

–Just more than 36 hours after the shooting that left Scalise and five others injured, Republican and Democratic lawmakers bowed their heads in prayer in the middle of the field at Nationals Park, at the Congressional Baseball Game that carried on in a show of unity and bipartisanship in front of a record crowd of 24,959. Special agent David Bailey, one of the Capitol Police officers injured in the shooting, threw out the first pitch.

–House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wisc.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) gave a joint interview to CNN from the game. “Tonight we’re all Team Scalise,” Pelosi said. Ryan called for unity and a for toning down heightened rhetoric in the wake of the shooting. “What we’re trying to do is tone down the rhetoric, lead by example and show people we can disagree with one another, we can have different ideas without being vitriolic, without going to such extremes,” he said. While the Democrats won the baseball game 11-2, they gave the trophy to Republicans to give to Scalise.

President Donald Trump. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

AHH: Drug stocks dropped suddenly yesterday after a Bloomberg report that the Trump administration is preparing an executive order aimed at lowering U.S. drug costs. Trump hammered on high drug prices during his campaign, but has said little publicly about the issue since then.

« Top health and budget officials in the administration will meet Friday to discuss the issue, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the session is private, » Bloomberg’s Anna Edney and Justin Sink report. « One policy being discussed for inclusion in the order is expressing support for value-based agreements, a drug industry-backed proposal in which pharmaceutical companies and health insurers develop arrangements to pay for products depending on how well they work, one of the people said. »

OOF: An estimated five percent of the population accounts for 50 percent of total medical costs, The Atlantic reports, in an article exploring how the U.S. spends $3.4 trillion on medical care every year. « That’s about 18 percent of the country’s total GDP, meaning that one out of every six dollars we spent in 2016 went to health care, » T.R. Reid writes. « The national doctor bill dwarfs anything else we spend money on, including food, clothing, housing, or even our mighty military. »

« If that $3.4 trillion were spread equally throughout the population, the bill would come to some $10,350 for every man, woman and child in the country, » T.R. continues. « But fortunately –for most of us, anyway—the cost of health care is not equally distributed. Rather, a small number of Americans run up most of the expense. The biggest medical costs are concentrated on a fairly small segment of the population—people with one or more chronic illnesses, plus victims of accidents or violent crime. »

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pauses while meeting with reporters on Capitol Hill. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

OUCH: Will the Senate’s health-care strategy of moving forward behind closed doors without committee hearings backfire? Maybe not. But then again, maybe.

« The bill’s secrecy is garnering more and more attention, and more and more outrage, » Paul Waldman writes in an opinion piece for the Post. « It has become one of the leading complaints Democrats make about it. And as any marketer knows, suspense is a terrific tool to increase public interest in your product. Tell people that your new movie or album is coming out soon, but give them only a taste of what it contains, and you’ll heighten the anticipation. »

« So by the time we actually get a look at the Senate’s bill, all that waiting may have primed the media to give it a great deal of attention, primed Democratic officeholders to run to the cameras to denounce it, and primed liberal activists to mount an all-out assault on the bill, pressuring potentially wavering senators to oppose it, » Paul writes.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) speaks to the media. (EPA/JIM LO SCALZO)

–Outrage is growing at the secrecy of Senate Republicans as they write a health-care bill. Even the rank-and-file are starting to acknowledge the process is unfolding in a less-than-ideal way. 

“I’ve said from Day 1, and I’ll say it again,” said Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told the New York Times. “The process is better if you do it in public, and that people get buy-in along the way and understand what’s going on. Obviously, that’s not the route that is being taken.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) indicated similar frustration to the NYT. “I come from a manufacturing background,” Johnson. “I’ve solved a lot of problems. It starts with information. Seems like around here, the last step is getting information, which doesn’t seem to be necessarily the most effective process.”

Last week, The Health 202 wrote about how Senate Republicans are falling even shorter of transparency than Democrats did back in 2010. And two great health reporters, Vox’s Sarah Kliff and Kaiser Health News’s Julie Rovner, gave their perspective from years of covering health policy on Republicans’ descent into secrecy.

Vox’s Carlos Maza tweeted that it’s against democratic values:

Trump has authoritarian impulses.

But so do Congressional Republicans fighting to keep their healthcare bill secret. It’s anti-democratic.

— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) June 15, 2017

The problem with Republicans hiding the their health care bill isn’t that it’s hypocritical.

It’s that it violates basic democratic norms.

— Carlos Maza (@gaywonk) June 15, 2017

Priorities USA, the largest Democratic super PAC, said it’s no surprise Republicans are acting this way:

–Meanwhile, there was a larger crowd than I’d ever seen before at theCcongressional baseball game last night. A fierce McConnell/Pelosi/Schumer/Ryan foursome yelled « play ball » to kick off the game:

Regarding Scalise, MedStar Washington Health Center earlier announced that the rifle shot to Scalise’s left hip « traveled across his pelvis, fracturing bones, injuring internal organs, and causing severe bleeding. » He went into shock and within hours received many units of blood via transfusion and underwent two operations. The Post’s Lenny Bernstein explores how a single penetrating wound to the pelvic region, which is densely packed with blood vessels, organs and other structures, is extremely dangerous. 

« Such details reflect the complexity of the pelvic area, which is home to the iliac blood vessels that include major arteries branching off the aorta — the main route that carries oxygenated blood to all parts of the body, » Lenny writes. « Wounds to those vessels, large and small, cause fast, severe blood loss, which can set off a cascade of problems for surgeons trying to save a patient’s life. »

« In fact, 30 percent to 50 percent of injuries to the main iliac vessels result in death, said Joseph V. Sakran, director of emergency general surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, who was himself shot in the throat after a football game about two decades ago when a fight broke out and someone fired into the crowd. »

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) could face some challenges from GOP House members next year. (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

–Get ready to hear about President Trump’s offline depiction of the House GOP health-care bill as « mean » for months on end. Democrats are certain to hammer that comment, which the president made to senators during a White House lunch earlier this week as he pushed them to make their bill more generous. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is using it to target several House members considering Senate runs next year, including Pennsylvania Reps. Mike Kelly (R) and Lou Barletta (R) who might challenge Sen. Bob Casey (D).

“It’s a rare moment when we agree with Donald Trump, but he’s right: Congressmen Kelly and Barletta’s health care plan would increase premiums by 20 percent, slash coverage for preexisting conditions and impose an age tax that would make older Pennsylvanians pay five times more for care — all to give big insurance companies another taxpayer funded handout, » DSCC spokesman David Bergstein said in a news release.

President Trump speaks before having lunch Tuesday with Republican Senators in the Cabinet Room of the White House. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

–Trump lobbed some sharp criticisms at the ACA as he hosted lunch on Tuesday for more than a dozen Republican senators to discuss their repeal-and-replace efforts, charging that premiums are skyrocketing out of control and millions are dropping out of the marketplaces. Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler dug into these claims — and found that Trump mangled things a bit. Let’s take it statement by statement: 

What Trump said: “Americans were told that premiums would go down by $2,500 per year. And instead, their premiums went up to levels that nobody thought even possible. »

The facts: « Obama, when campaigning in 2008, did misleadingly say that his plan would reduce premiums for families by $2,500, » Glenn writes. « Over the years, Republicans have compared this misguided Obama pledge with the increase in annual family premiums for employer-provided plans, even though the ACA largely was aimed at the individual insurance market. »

« But here’s the funny thing: Health costs for employer-provided plans have grown much slower than expected since the Affordable Care Act was implemented. Experts debate whether the ACA played a significant role, but the average family premium is now almost $3,600 lower than if premium growth had kept pace with the rate in the decade before the law was passed. »

As for marketplace coverage, it’s hard to compare pre-ACA plans with post-ACA plans because the law eliminated plans with low costs but few benefits. « One study found that, when adjusting for actuarial value to create an apples-to-apples comparison, individual-market premiums actually dropped after the introduction of the ACA, » Glenn writes.

« Average insurance premiums in the Obamacare marketplace now are about at the level predicted by the Congressional Budget Office for 2017 when it first evaluated the law in 2009, » he writes. « But premiums have certainly spiked in recent years, as insurance companies grappled with a mix of people in the insurance pools tilted toward people who have chronic illnesses and thus require more care and frequent doctor or hospital visits.

What Trump said: « It was just announced yesterday that 2 million people have dropped out of Obamacare — 2 million additional. They are leaving fast….Insurers are fleeing the market…Last week it was announced that one of the largest insurers is pulling out of Ohio — the great state of Ohio.”

The facts: An HHS report last week said that 10.3 million marketplace enrollees paid their first premium in February, compared with 12.2 million who had signed up for coverage as of Jan. 31. But the report tracked payments only through mid-March, even though many people don’t pay their first month’s premium until that month. And for all past enrollment periods, there have always been a certain percentage of customers who don’t end up paying their premium at all.

As for insurers fleeing the market, it’s true that many are pulling out, but Trump ignores that many say they’re exiting the business because of uncertainty created by his own administration — in particular, whether it will continue to pay “cost-sharing reductions” to insurance companies helping them reduce co-pays and deductibles for low-income patients.

« Trump specifically mentioned Ohio. But Anthem Insurance, saying it would leave the state’s exchange, cited the lack of certainty about the cost-sharing payments and ‘an increasing lack of overall predictability,' » Glenn writes. « So Trump, decrying the ‘broken promise’ represented by the departure of insurance companies, blames Obamacare for problems that his administration has fostered. »

Budget Director Mick Mulvaney explains and defends the administration’s 2018 budget to the House Budget Committee. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Today

• OMB Director Mick Mulvaney will chair a meeting with top administration officials today to talk about a forthcoming executive order that would target lowering drug costs in the United States, according to reports by Politico and Bloomberg.

Coming Up

• The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration will hold a hearing on the FDA’s budget request with FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb on June 20.
• The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies will hold a budget hearing for the National Institutes of Health on June 22.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) criticized Senate Republicans for writing their version of the American Health Care Act behind closed doors:

President Trump bashes Obamacare, claims Americans are « fleeing the market: »

Here are five things to know about youth tobacco use, according to the CDC:

Watch as Republicans and Democrats pray together at the Congressional Baseball Game: 

And Stephen Colbert takes on the report from The Post that special counsel is investigating President Trump for possible obstruction of justice:

Vice President Pence turned 58 on the same day that two senior intelligence officials fielded questions before a Senate committee about the FBI’s ongoing Russia probe — and one day before fired FBI Director James B. Comey appeared before the same committee to discuss why he believed President Trump had acted inappropriately.

The back-to-back rounds of testimony were merely the latest signs of a presidency in the grip of tumult. But flying down to Houston that morning for an astronaut event, Pence didn’t seem to have a care in the world.

His staff had decorated the middle cabin of Air Force Two with a festive tableau of balloons and streamers, and greeted him with a warbling rendition of “Happy Birthday.” 

“What are you all doing?” the vice president asked with a smile, opening his arms wide and taking in the scene with a combination of faux-surprise and subdued delight. “This is out of control.”  

Donald Trump’s administration did seem to be spiraling out of control, but Pence was — literally and figuratively — 1,400 miles away from the maelstrom in Washington, projecting his de facto stance of serene confidence or willful oblivion, depending on one’s perspective. 

Such is life for Pence, who has earned his boss’s support and confidence one laudatory and skim-milk utterance at a time. On Monday, when the president held his first full Cabinet meeting, Pence set the tone by describing working for Trump as “the greatest privilege of my life” — setting off an avalanche of obsequiousness as the remaining officials took turns lavishing praise on their leader.  

But Pence’s political balance-beam routine is showing signs of strain, according to a portrait of the vice president culled from interviews with 17 aides, advisers, friends, allies and Republican operatives. The vice president himself declined requests for an interview.

[Pence hires outside counsel to deal with Russia probe inquiries]

As the Russia investigation continues to expand, for example, Pence took steps this week to protect himself, hiring former U.S. attorney and Virginia attorney general Richard Cullen as his own outside legal counsel, just as Trump has retained attorney Marc Kasowitz.

The vice president’s advisers are also discussing bringing on an additional aide to help with strategy — likely either Nick Ayers, a senior strategist to Pence who is chairman of the vice president’s newly launched super PAC; Marc Short, who currently heads up legislative affairs in the White House; or Marty Obst, the former manager of Pence’s Indiana gubernatorial campaign who is executive director of the super PAC.

The moves seemed aimed, in part, at returning the vice president to his most comfortable role — supporting and defending the president — while also helping to insulate him from the turmoil that has enveloped the White House. Some believe that the vice president is being ill-served by the chronic chaos inside the West Wing and could benefit from a more forceful advocate on his staff.

“It’s tough to be Donald Trump’s vice president, because Trump says flamboyant things and then if you’re the vice president, you have to go on TV and defend things that are hard to defend,” said Stephen Moore, an economist for the Heritage Foundation who served as a senior adviser to the Trump campaign. “He does it incredibly skillfully.”

Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, look over their pet rabbit, Marlon Bundo, as they speak during a May 9 event celebrating National Military Appreciation Month in Washington. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

[Karen Pence is the vice president’s ‘prayer warrior,’ gut check and shield]

Pence suffered two high-profile embarrassments that have served to define his role in the administration’s early months: First, when he was misled about former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with the Russians, and again last month when Trump publicly contradicted him about the reasons for firing Comey.

One Pence loyalist described himself as at his “wits’ end,” adding, “There are some organizational gaps.” 

One senior White House adviser said Pence was exasperated with the West Wing communications shop, which sent him out with a half-baked talking point to explain Comey’s ouster. But Pence’s office argues that Trump never undermined Pence with his public comments suggesting he fired Comey over the Russia probe; the president, the Pence team said, was simply adding more context to his decision and that it is not the vice president’s place to explain Trump’s decision-making process. 

“The vice president stands by his comments and enjoys a great working relationship with all departments within the White House,” said Jarrod Agen, a Pence spokesman.

Although Trump and Pence enjoy a warm personal relationship, Pence allies say he faces two stark challenges. First, in a West Wing filled with competing factions vying for supremacy, the best interests of the vice president sometimes get lost. Perhaps more importantly, they say, Pence is simply too loyal and willing to parrot the White House message, even at his own potential peril.  

One former Pence adviser described the vice president’s role within the White House as more of a “super senior staffer” than an empowered executive. Pence, who has an office in both the West Wing and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, is often seen floating in the hallways that connect to the Oval Office, not unlike other staffers. Another former aide mentioned Pence’s almost “military-style orientation toward authority.”

 Faced with the revelation that Flynn had misled him over contacts with Russians, for instance, Pence had to be urged by staff to forcefully voice his frustrations with Flynn to the president, according to two people with knowledge of the incident.  

And while aides said Pence does give Trump his honest and unvarnished counsel in one-on-one meetings, some Pence allies privately wish he would be bolder in asserting his opinions in the group debates the president enjoys.  

The flip-side, of course, is that by publicly keeping his opinions close, the vice president — who, for instance, urged the president to withdraw from the Paris climate accord but did not crow about his victory — has not only engendered good will with Trump, but also managed to often steer clear of the sniping and power struggles that plague the administration.   

“Pence has found a way to execute the balance between having enormous influence and being an honest broker, which is a hard thing to pull off,” said Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.  

[Shadow president or mere shadow? Pence seeks to reassure allies unnerved by Trump]

The vice president — who routinely tamps down talk of a future “President Pence” — raised suspicions among Trump loyalists when he launched his super PAC, “Great America Committee” in mid-May, just a week after Trump fired Comey and during a moment of particular political danger for the president. Though the group had been long-planned and approved at the highest levels of the White House — the outside group can, for instance, help pay for travel expenses related to campaigning — the timing was inauspicious. 

Some in the West Wing wondered if the vice president was trying to position him at the expense of Trump, and Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of the president, took to Twitter. “No Vice President in modern history had their own PAC less than 6 months into the President’s first term,” Stone wrote. “Hmmmm.”  

Pence’s super PAC team had originally planned a bigger rollout, which they quickly scrapped, and both Ayers and Obst stressed to Trump aides that the group had been in the works for several months and was intended solely to help the vice president push the administration’s agenda across the country.  

“People can’t have it both ways,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, in defending Pence. “They can’t say he’s loyal to a fault and then also say he’s somehow competing with the president.”  

This summer, Pence will ramp up his fundraising efforts for various Republican Party committees and will begin helping individual GOP candidates campaign and fundraise during the August recess and into the fall. He is expected to campaign with Ed Gillespie, the Republican nominee for governor in Virginia.  

He will also focus on outreach to various conservative groups, and in August is planning a four-country trip to South America to focus on trade and security issues. 

Trump initially chose Pence, in part, because he looked like a vice president out of central casting — a sort of generically handsome politician, with a close-cropped helmet of white hair and a compact physique that seemed to recall an iconic, Republican male from a bygone era.  

But under Trump, Pence, who heaps plaudits on Trump and frequently refers to his “broad-shouldered leadership,” has in some ways become a parody of a deferential vice president — a servant in waiting, eager to serve his master’s whims. 

One Republican operative remembers a meeting with business leaders in the Roosevelt Room, to which Pence arrived late. Though there was an open seat at the table reserved for Pence near Trump, the operative recalled, the vice president stood alongside the outskirts of the room like a staffer before waiting for a break in the conversation to take his seat.  

Others say differences in background and temperament have also prevented Pence from ever becoming a true Trump confidant. The president, after all, habitually evaluates others based on their personal wealth and Pence — who joked on the campaign trail that he and Trump were separated by “a whole bunch of zeros” — can never compete with Trump’s mogul friends.

People familiar with the interactions between the two men say the president often finds ways to remind Pence who is the ultimate boss. He jokingly yet repeatedly ribs Pence for, as Indiana governor, endorsing Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) over him in the state’s primary and often teases Pence about his far smaller crowd sizes — a quip Pence himself has deployed.  

[Pence remains above the fray, but is he outside the inner circle?]

One person recalled that sometimes, when Pence speaks in a meeting, the president offers him a verbal pat on the head. “Wasn’t he a great pick?” Trump will say, with the tone of a dad whose kid finally said something useful.  

Joel Goldstein, a vice presidential expert and law professor at St. Louis University, noted that Pence seems to enjoy significant face time with Trump and serves as a liaison to Capitol Hill, but added that he can come off as “sort of a sycophant-in-chief.” 

“He runs a real risk in that so often his celebration of Trump is focused on how great Trump is, and not on the substance of the specific policies he’s trying to sell, and so I think that can end up making him look like he’s just sort of weak and not presidential and not dignified,” Goldstein said.  

But Pence so far has accepted the rigors and challenges of his job with a serenity that some friends and aides attribute to his Christian faith.  

Pence’s official portfolio includes a commission to investigate voter fraud, the National Space Council, and serving as president of the Senate. Allies say he was instrumental in helping Trump settle on Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and in a number of key Cabinet picks, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. He also helped revive the stalled House health-care legislation after it imploded on the first try.

 During a frenzied day when it looked like Trump might withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement, Pence served as a conduit to the business community, many whom called to voice their alarm. “I hear you,” he told the worried executives. “I’ll be right back to you.” 

And once Trump had decided to remain in the trade agreement, Pence again reported back, telling them matter-of-factly, “It’s been taken care of.” Pence, one Republican operative noted, never tried to claim any credit for the president’s reversal.