Neil Vigdor at NYT:

Looking to contrast himself with former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — leading rivals in the race for the Republican nomination who converged on Iowa on Saturday — former Vice President Mike Pence made a play for civility politics during a round table with about two dozen Christian college and university presidents.

Mr. Pence also shared an anecdote at the event about being invited in 2010 to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., by his then-House colleague John Lewis to commemorate Bloody Sunday. Noting their political differences, he called the civil rights leader, who died in July 2020, a “great man” and said that they had a mutual respect for each other as men of faith. That’s a stark contrast from how Mr. Trump played down Mr. Lewis’s accomplishments after his death. “He didn’t come to my inauguration,” Mr. Trump said at the time.