Mike Pence’s top task as Donald Trump’s vice president was to be loyal. Now, his loyalty to the Constitution has put him in a political no man’s land.

That Vice President Mike Pence has reconciled with President Donald Trump, at least in the public telling, should come as no surprise.

The vice president is a man of deep faith and loyalty, whether it be to his family, the president he serves, or the Constitution. And so, six days after a deadly riot in the Capitol – spurred on by the fighting words of President Trump and crowd chants of “Hang Mike Pence,” followed by the vice president’s certification of Joe Biden’s victory – he is back to doing what he’s always done: serving as the low-key, level-headed ballast to a mercurial president who both excited and repelled the American electorate.

Vice President Pence could never be another Trump, and that was the point. Mr. Trump made him running mate precisely because he would not overshadow the boss or try to usurp his power. And therein lies the paradox of Mr. Pence: He loyally served a president who proved to be perhaps the most controversial in history, and thus Mr. Pence himself may be finished in politics.

“Pence clearly did his constitutional and legal duty, and he deserves credit for that,” says Joel Goldstein, an expert on the vice presidency and law professor emeritus at St. Louis University. But until last week, he adds, Mr. Pence had gone “way overboard in his public praise of Trump, diminishing the office and diminishing himself.”

A former Pence aide pushes back on the idea that the vice president is too politically damaged to run for president in 2024. “Never say never,” says the former aide, speaking on background. “I’m not predicting, but I would anticipate that the vice president would do all the things necessary to preserve the right to say yes to running, if that’s what he’s called to do.”

Consider the incoming president. Mr. Biden himself served as vice president to a more charismatic boss and seemed finished in politics when he left office four years ago. But he rose to become the man for the moment, enough voters decided, both in the Democratic primaries and on Nov. 3, and in eight days, he will become the 46th president of the United States.