WE SHOULD ONLY ELECT GOVERNORS:

As the coronavirus crisis sweeps the US government, the nation has come to rely on a voice of calm from the White House -- only it's not Donald Trump's.

Caricatured as a meek and loyal yes man, Vice President Mike Pence is surprising even some of his critics with an authoritative performance in the role of coronavirus tsar. [...]

Heading the coronavirus task force has to be one of the hardest jobs in US politics today.

Pence not only has to coordinate the response to the pandemic. He has to clean up after his erratic boss -- and please him at the same time.

For weeks, Trump dismissed coronavirus as something that didn't have to be taken seriously. He also repeatedly accused his Democratic opponents and the media of hyping the crisis in a bid to weaken his reelection chances.

"His aides are literally scrambling around to try to make something more sane that's absolutely insane, which happens to be the president," Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as Trump's communications director, said in a scathing assessment on Sunday.

And Pence is the one scrambling the most.

He regularly has to massage or clarify the president's statements, all while framing his own comments as support.

But sometimes, the divergence in approaches by the two men cannot be masked over.

While Pence seeks to reassure, Trump, facing an increasingly difficult November reelection, sees conflict everywhere.

So when Pence praised the Democratic governor of Washington state, Jay Inslee, for his response to one of the worst local coronavirus outbreaks in the country, Trump brutally smacked him down.

"I told Mike not to be complimentary," Trump said. "That governor is a snake."

Pence doesn't bite back.

Still, when asked on NBC about the president's Twitter attacks against Democrats during the coronavirus crisis, Pence did issue what was interpreted as a rare rebuke, citing the "irresponsible rhetoric."

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