Was there someone I was meant to be introducing you to? The botched Trump-Pence roll-out

Trump can be relied upon to do things differently but for camp Pence it was a day to cringe

An embrace that seemed more awkward than enthusiastic (Getty)

Some of the suited Republican guests stumbled first into ‘Inked’, a popular New York tattoo expo that was taking place in another ballroom one floor below. (The Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan is a bit of a labyrinth.) But that aside, this was not your usual Veep roll-out.

There were moments when those that did make into the correct hall had reason to wonder if the man we had been told would be joining Donald Trump as his number two on the Republican ticket was even in the building at all. Had he bottled out? Or had Trump changed his mind?

The queasiness began when Mr Trump first came out on his own and proceeded to speak, sans the man of the hour (that would be Indiana Governor Mike Pence), for more than half an hour. Was he stalling? Had they had a row in the wings before the show had even begun?

Even when he did spend fleeting moments making reference to his new running mate, his heart didn’t seem to be quite in it. “He is a solid, solid person,” he offered, before adding also that Mr Pence “looks very good”. (That presumably was more or less the rationale adopted by Senator John McCain when he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate eight years ago.)

Most of Mr Trump’s speech, though, was about himself. There was his success at winning the nomination in the first place. He had done it by a “landslide”, he boasted. And he was anxious to insist that he had been clairvoyant about the British to vote to leave the European Union. “I was the one that predicted it, everyone said I was wrong!”

The tattoo expo happening one floor below (David Usborne)

Any Republican strategist with half an inkling about campaign stagecraft was surely cringing. What was Mr Trump doing? When finally he did ask Mr Pence onto the stage - a full half an hour later - he himself instantly walked off it. Only at the very end did the two men pose together, each surrounded by members of their respective families. That, at least, was playing by the book.

Maybe the mess of it will be quickly forgotten. The Republican convention starts on Monday with all its hoopla. But if eyebrows were raised it was because there had been so much awkwardness about the choice of Pence already, starting with the mess of Mr Trump postponing an original roll-out that was set for Friday (citing, not very credibly, the events in Nice) and then reports by CNN that having offered the number two slot to the Governor on Thursday he was agonising by midnight the same day about possibly changing his mind. (Aides reportedly said he could not.)

Another reason Mr Trump gave for having settled on the Governor was that it would bring party unity. That, perhaps, is more plausible because Mr Pence holds many (actually all) of the radical conservative views that, in the view of the right flank of the party, Mr Trump is lacking.

That though is also why they seem like oil and water. Their past positions on social issues like abortion and gay rights, are almost diametrically opposed. (The same is true of trade, where Mr Pence has defended the same free trade treaties that Mr Trump has professed to abhor.)

While Mr Trump has stayed far away from conservative rancour about the expansion of gay rights, including gay marriage, Mr Pence, who calls himself a Christian before a Republican, has not. “Congress should oppose any effort to put gay and lesbian relationships on an equal legal status with heterosexual marriage,“ he wrote in 2010, midway through his six terms as a member of the US House of Representatives.

There is a similar divide between the men on abortion. Some years ago Mr Pence wondered out loud why aborted babies got less compassion than people killed in the Twin Towers on 9/11. This March he signed a law banning terminating a pregnancy in cases where genetic defects in the fetus are detected and requiring that miscarried or aborted fetuses be buried or cremated.

Other of Mr Pence’s more curious positions include his insistence that climate change is a “myth” and that cigarette smoking doesn’t kill.

That mention of him being solid might be telling if we believe that Mr Trump didn’t want anyone on the ticket who might overshadow him. Another pirate. That may be one reason he shied away from giving the job to Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, a 1000-watt performer on the campaign stage.

But maybe he is still nervous even of Mr Pence, given how long it took him to allow him to emerge from behind the curtains on Saturday. And, truth be told, for those not familiar with the Governor, he has a compellingly smooth delivery for a politician some have labeled as dull.

Mr Trump’s selfish performance seems to have come even as a bit of a shock to the Hillary Clinton campaign, who responded with this response.

“We were prepared to respond with the many ways in which Mike Pence is the most extreme pick in a generation—a doubling down of Trump’s divisive rhetoric and policies. But after publicly waffling over his own choice, Trump spent more time today making false attacks on Hillary Clinton—several of which could also be leveled against Pence—and talking about his own businesses than his own running mate. It turns out, you can force Trump to make a choice and give him a speech, he’s always going to be Trump.”

Beware, however. Trump being Trump is what some believe will win him the election, regardless of who his running mate is or how he treats him.