While U.S. President Donald Trump is a political tyro known for histrionics — threatening “fire and fury” and tweeting conspiracy theories and slurs — his vice-president, Mike Pence, is quite the opposite. He is a seasoned operator who stays on message. And so when Pence, completely unprompted, chose to compare North Korean nuclear disarmament to the Libyan example on Fox News on Monday, he presumably had the full backing of the administration. Nobody in the White House would have been surprised when North Korea reacted by calling Pence a “political dummy” and threatening a “nuclear-to-nuclear showdown,” given similar comments by National Security Adviser John Bolton also earned a stinging rebuke last week.