Looking back on J.D. Vance’s first week as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, it is hard not to conclude that Donald Trump has once again confounded conventional wisdom. Prophecies of political doom, both from worried Republicans and Democratic operatives whose mouths watered at the prospect of a target with a long record as a public intellectual have failed to materialize. Democrats have found there is little hay to be made accusing someone of expressing views they proudly stand by, and Vance has added new energy to the Republican ticket.
In the end, Democratic attacks fizzled, and Biden’s sudden withdrawal from the race is likely to refocus attention on the Democrat nomination fiasco, making it even more difficult for the media to define Vance. By the time attention returns, the chance to paint him as a “threat to democracy,” if it existed at all, will have been lost, and Republicans will be left with all the assets of J.D. Vance and few of the expected drawbacks.
If there is a lesson, and to be fair there are probably several, the core one is something we have all learned over the past decade: never underestimate Donald Trump. His choices may on occasion seem impulsive or in defiance of conventional wisdom, but he has a knack for being vindicated. Trump correctly read the room about his own party and about his opponents. Judging the likelihood of a Biden dropout, made a bet he felt confident he could win.
There are many words that can be used to describe the choice of John David Vance as the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States. Bold. Transformative. High risk, but even higher reward.
The one word that stands out most, however, is “Trumpian.” At the end of the day, the decision did not fall to pollsters, media commentators, or interest groups. It fell to the gut instinct of one man. Donald Trump spent months listening to the pros and cons of the candidates, and he could have spent centuries. What he ultimately did was make a choice.
That was a choice to go with what Donald Trump believed he and America needed, rather than what specific factions or individuals necessarily wanted. The thing about J.D. Vance which separated him from other candidates is that whereas they each brought with them a mixture of strengths and weaknesses, Vance’s weaknesses are his strengths.
J.D. Vance is young. At 39, he is the first millennial to run on a national ticket, and he has served in the Senate for less than two years. His critics will argue that he is politically inexperienced on the national stage, and they are correct. He lacks the five decades Joe Biden spent in Washington, or the three decades it took Kamala Harris to fall upwards in California politics until the point at which father time and Donald Trump’s momentum have left her poised to bid for the nation’s highest office.
At a time when Biden’s decline has demoralized even the most partisan Democrats, and the American people have increasingly lost faith in their professional elites, is youth and inexperience really such a liability? Could Donald Trump ever truly win over those who maintained faith in Washington, no matter who he chose? Would it be possible for him to sleep soundly at night if he did?
There is a sentiment in political circles that a vice presidential pick should “do no harm.” To many campaign professionals, that has become a short hand for “pick someone who believes in nothing.” J.D. Vance is not that candidate. JD Vance, as the Democratic Party and mainstream media will be sure to tell us over the next few months, believes in things. He has opinions. He has expressed them. Worse, he has dared to partake of that most forbidden fruit for professional politicians: He has engaged in nuance.
For those in his generation, whose experience of politics was rival groups of well-heeled interns facing each other with signs saying, “Bush prevented another 9/11 by invading Iraq” and, “Bush lied, people died,” Vance has dared to suggest that both parties were full of it – that both had turned American foreign policy into a TV show for a generation whose children were all too often forced to pay the price of their proxy war.
Critics will allege there is an undercurrent of anger beneath Vance’s criticisms of America’s governance over the past three decades. What they miss is that his generation has every right to feel angry, and those who are not mad are more often than not in despair. The best years of their lives were spent mired in debates about reforming immigration, entitlements, and the tax system that amounted to nothing. Their inheritance and even the lives of their friends was spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that their elders now pretend to forget.
Joe Biden had the nerve to stand up on stage at the presidential debate and suggest that no American service members died during his presidency, erasing from existence the 13 Americans who were killed during his bungled flight from Kabul. Or the three that were killed by Iran just this past year. Biden might well have forgotten their sacrifice, much as he is apt to forget the contents of his breakfast on any given day. But a generation of Americans have not.
In light of Biden’s withdrawal, it is useful to contrast JD Vance with prospective Democrat vice presidential pick Pete Buttigieg, who is in many ways his antithesis. At 42, Buttigieg is three years Vance’s elder, but his appeal lies with a different generation.
Buttigieg has been called a great communicator, but in reality he is a great marketing product. His appeal comes from presenting himself not as the genuine voice of his generation, but as the image of what older generations wish to believe it was – the successful young man who went to Harvard, served in the military, worked at McKinsey, and now spends his time telling his parents and their generation that they did well by him. That the dream of the 1990s, of Clintonian affluence without the need for responsibility or hard choices is alive and well with Pete.
The breadth of his appeal to the traditional media is no less surprising than how that appeal dissipated when it came to his own generation of Democratic primary voters, as well as African Americans, Latinos, and others forced to struggle with the reality of life in 21st century America, not a carefully curated illusion crafted for retired liberals.
Vance, on the other hand, is real. His views are real. His intensity is forged by experiences that, while shared in full by few, are shared in part by millions. Some left-wing critics have accused Donald Trump of picking a younger, miniature version of himself. This is vitriol with a nugget of truth. Donald Trump chose someone whose visceral appeal mirrored his own.
Donald Trump was the personification of the American dream of the 1980s. He truly believes that America was great and can be again. J.D. Vance is the personification of the America of the 2000s. Their youth opened with Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings. Their young adulthood was consumed by Iraq, the global financial crisis, and the valium offered by an Obama administration which delivered the optics of deliberation while allowing the world to careen into chaos.
Donald Trump speaks for those who remember American greatness. J.D. Vance speaks for those who have been told that to even aspire to greatness is reprehensible. Donald Trump represents an America where companies bid for the stars, and sometimes fell to earth in bankruptcy. Vance represents an America in which major companies, too big to fail, focus on social engineering that tells young men that aspiring to anything greater is racist, sexist, or colonialist.
Neither approach is without risks, but what Trump grasped and his critics did not is that they are ultimately the same risk. There was no point in Donald Trump selecting a defensive vice president when his own nomination was already a decision by the Republican Party to go on the political offensive.
Trump had to choose between doubling-down or compromising his own message. He chose to double-down. He chose not to compromise his message, but to expand it to a new audience and a new generation.
It was a very Trumpian choice. And Democrats have yet to learn how to properly counter Trumpian strategies. So, that choice increasingly looks like the strategic one as well.
Walter Samuel is the pseudonym of a prolific international affairs writer and academic. He has worked in Washington as well as in London and Asia, and holds a Doctorate in International History.
