What is Mike Pence's shutdown role?

The vice presidency is often seen as a meaningless job with little real authority, and for Mike Pence, that has never been clearer than during the partial government shutdown.

Even as Pence tries to spearhead a compromise with Democrats, holding numerous congressional meetings over the weekend, Trump is giving him "very little room to negotiate," The Atlantic reports. In fact, the vice president is seen as "sidelined" with "diminishing influence" in the White House, with one Democratic aide saying, "I don't know that he has any authority whatsoever."

That conclusion is not a hard one to reach. After all, Trump has been undercutting Pence during the shutdown right from the very beginning, when Pence told lawmakers the president would sign the short-term spending bill that would prevent a shutdown even though it didn't include wall funding. Trump, of course, ended up announcing at the last minute that wouldn't sign the bill after all.

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The Atlantic also describes a meeting in which Pence asked why Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) hadn't responded to his offer to demand less than Trump's proposed $5 billion for a wall. Schumer said that he wasn't taking this offer very seriously considering Trump and administration officials were saying at the very same time that he wouldn't agree to less than $5 billion. As Schumer turned to Trump to verify this, Trump just "smirked and nodded." In meetings over the weekend, Pence reportedly wasn't even allowed to propose a new figure.

The result is that even though Pence was once seen as an effective negotiator who can capitalize on his relationships with members of Congress, thanks to Trump's unpredictable nature, that hasn't come in handy at the precise moment it could have been most useful. Read more at The Atlantic.