(Above: Indiana Gov. Mike Pence makes the case that the next U.S. President should be a governor)
While Indiana Gov. Mike Pence was in Birmingham to speak at the Alabama Republican Party summer dinner, he sat down with Yellowhammer News CEO Cliff Sims to film an episode of The Exchange, Yellowhammer’s weekly interview feature.
Rather than releasing the entire interview at once, Yellowhammer is rolling it out in pieces throughout this week, an approach we will be trying out with future Exchange interviews as well.
Previous portions of the interview:
1. Pence discusses opting out of Common Core
2. Pence: Gary Palmer ‘man of integrity, strong conservative views’
3. Pence defends Medicaid expansion
Pence has been widely speculated about as a potential 2016 presidential candidate, but he will have to decide whether to make that leap or run for a second term as Indiana’s governor.
“We’re doing everything we can to earn the right to do this job in 2016 in the State of Indiana, but people who know me well know that I’m not a long-term planner,” Pence said.
Pence served in the United States House of Representatives for over a decade before returning to Indiana to run for the state’s highest office. Sims asked Pence if his combined experience in D.C. and on the state-level would be part of the case he would make to voters as to why he’d be a strong president.
“Some people say the next president ought to be a governor and I’m certainly sympathetic to that view,” Pence laughed. “I really do believe my experience in Washington and now my experience helping to lead the State of Indiana tells me that the cure for what ails this country is going to come more from the state capitols than it ever will from our nation’s capitol… States are particularly well-suited to craft the kind of policies that encourage investment, create economic growth, create educational attainment and improve the quality of life of our citizens.”
With that in mind, Pence said that if Republican re-take the senate in 2014 and the White House in 2016, they should focus on returning power to the states.
“I really do believe that renewed Republican majorities in Washington, D.C. and a new administration should make it their aim not merely to cut government spending in Washington,” Pence said, “but we must demand that (they) permanently reduce the size and scope of the Federal government by restoring to the states the resources and the flexibility that’s rightfully theirs under the Constitution.”
For more episodes of The Exchange, visit Yellowhammer TV.
