On the menu today: J. D. Vance knocked it out of the park in his convention address last night; too bad he was knocking it out of the park in the name of protectionism, populism, nationalism, industrial policy, and quasi-isolationism. But let’s pause to recognize Vance’s amazingly wide range of life experience, and note that if Vance were a Democrat, his life story is all we would be hearing about him.
Great Speech, Masterfully Delivered! I Hated It
Milwaukee — There is a good chance that J. D. Vance will be the next vice president of the United States, and a key player in a second term for Donald Trump.
A lot of people will have trouble with this distinction, but I think Vance masterfully delivered an amazing speech . . . that I did not like. Vance made the best possible pitch for a vision of the party I disagree with, using the most mainstream-friendly, warm, fuzzy language to sell an agenda of protectionism, populism, nationalism, industrial policy, and quasi-isolationism. Vance’s speech was Obama-esque in its ability to take ideas that are controversial or divisive and make them sound full of common sense.
The Senate’s loudest opponent of assisting Ukraine didn’t mention the conflict with Russia at all, and hand-waved away all foreign-policy disputes with just a few phrases:
Together, we will make sure our allies share in the burden of securing world peace. No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer. Together, we will send our kids to war only when we must.
Yes, but Americans have strong disagreements on what “when we must” means.
Trump’s agenda of a 10 percent tariff on all imported goods — which would instantly make prices jump on so much of what Americans buy — was transmogrified into, “We’re done sacrificing supply chains to unlimited global trade, and we’re going to stamp more and more products with that beautiful label, ‘Made in the U.S.A.’”
The more personal Vance was, the better he was. Vance was as loveable and funny as a sitcom dad. He’s Jeff Foxworthy, a few states over. “If there’s a handgun in your granny’s silverware drawer, you might be a hillbilly!” I want Vance’s late Mamaw to be our national drug-policy coordinator or in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
As Wednesday night’s speech made clear, Vance has packed a lot into his nearly 40 years on this earth. Back in 2016, when The New Yorker liked him, Joshua Rothman wrote, “It seems safe to say that Vance, who is now in his early thirties, has seen a wider swath of America than most people.”
There was a time when Vance was the toast of the New York Times, The New Yorker, PBS, and NPR. Of course, these were the days when he was writing of Barack Obama for the New York Times:
It is one of the great failures of recent political history that the Republican Party was too often unable to disconnect legitimate political disagreements from the fact that the president himself is an admirable man. Part of this opposition comes from this uniquely polarized moment in our politics, part of it comes from Mr. Obama’s leadership style — more disconnected and cerebral than personal and emotive — and part of it (though a smaller amount than many on the left suppose) comes from the color of his skin. . . . At a pivotal time in my life, Barack Obama gave me hope that a boy who grew up like me could still achieve the most important of my dreams. For that, I’ll miss him, and the example he set. [Emphasis added.]
And he was also telling NPR, “I think there’s a chance, if I feel like Trump has a really good chance of winning, that I might have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton. . . . But I think that I’m going to vote third party because I can’t stomach Trump. I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.”
(I bolded that section above because the guy who was writing in the Times about how part of the GOP opposition to Obama was driven by racism is now the running mate of President Birther. Vance gets a lot of grief for his rapid political evolution, and he deserves a big chunk of it.)
If Vance had remained Obama-friendly and Trump-critical, and chosen to run for office as a Democrat, some of the same institutions currently denouncing him as a dangerous extremist would be singing his praises.
Vance’s life could be the sort of story that Hollywood would get Ron Howard to direct — er, wait, I’m sorry, that’s exactly what happened, although now Variety laments that Howard and producer Brian Grazer “created a monster by legitimizing his origin story.” (Similarly, Ed Simon laments in the New York Times, “His book and film contracts have proven Faustian in the sense that they may place him a heartbeat from the Oval Office.”) This is all your fault, Richie Cunningham!
You would like to think that having a wide range of life experiences makes a person wiser, more understanding, and more empathetic.
Who’s the last president or vice president who grew up poor? I mean poor, so poor that Vance’s grandmother “was negotiating with the Meals on Wheels person to give her more food so that both of us could have something to eat,” as Vance recalled.
Bill Clinton? Barack Obama’s upbringing was unusual, but I don’t think he could accurately be described as impoverished. It may well have been Ronald Reagan.
We haven’t had a commander in chief who had served in the military in a war zone since George H. W. Bush. Vance is quick to emphasize he didn’t see combat, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t assume the risk of wearing the uniform and working in a country where insurgents were trying to kill Americans. From Hillbilly Elegy:
As a public affairs marine, I would attach to different units to get a sense of their daily routine. Sometimes I’d escort civilian press, but generally I’d take photos or write short stories about individual marines or their work. Early in my deployment, I attached to a civil affairs unit to do community outreach. Civil affairs missions were typically considered more dangerous, as a small number of marines would venture into unprotected Iraqi territory to meet with locals. On our particular mission, senior marines met with local school officials while the rest of us provided security or hung out with the schoolkids, playing soccer and passing out candy and school supplies. One very shy boy approached me and held out his hand. When I gave him a small eraser, his face briefly lit up with joy before he ran away to his family, holding his two-cent prize aloft in triumph. I have never seen such excitement on a child’s face. . . .
As I stood and surveyed the mass of children of a war-torn nation, their school without running water, and the overjoyed boy, I began to appreciate how lucky I was: born in the greatest country on earth, every modern convenience at my fingertips, supported by two loving hillbillies, and part of a family that, for all its quirks, loved me unconditionally. At that moment, I resolved to be the type of man who would smile when someone gave him an eraser. I haven’t quite made it there, but without that day in Iraq, I wouldn’t be trying.
Obviously, no president has worked in Silicon Valley. Vance was a principal at Mithril Capital, a fund co-founded by Peter Thiel. Principals identify investment opportunities for the fund, conduct due diligence on target companies, and help manage portfolio companies. How many recent presidents or vice presidents have done work like that?
Any other president or vice president marry an Indian American, or have a Hindu ceremony when they were married? Didn’t think so.
Vance brings a remarkable range of life experience to this campaign. We’ll see how it serves him.
Biden Is Unwell, in So Many Ways
Up above, I asserted there’s a good chance that Vance will be the next vice president. Put another way, think about what must happen for Vance to not be the next vice president on January 20, 2025.
Biden must jump a couple of points in the polls, and so far, he and his campaign staff have shown no indication that they know how to do that. “Keep doing what we’ve been doing” just isn’t going to cut it.
As I noted yesterday morning, Biden and his fans keep walking around saying, “It’s essentially a toss-up race.” It really isn’t. Biden went into the debate trailing, turned in a terrible performance, and now he trails a bit more. About the best news for Democrats is that they’ve had a terrible couple of weeks, and Biden is still in the race. Maybe he’s got a high floor, or Trump has a low ceiling.
Or Democrats must unify behind an alternative, and get the electorate to forgive them for insisting, throughout this past year, that a faltering 81-year-old man was just fine and could serve another four years. Van Jones put it succinctly on CNN: “A bullet couldn’t stop Trump, a virus just stopped Biden. You’ve got the nominees of this party getting their butts kissed — Biden is getting his butt kicked by his own party. The Democrats are coming apart, the Republicans are coming together.”
As Charles Lane wrote in the Post, “As whoppers go, ‘there is no reason to worry about Biden’ is a good-size one, as confirmed by both basic medical knowledge regarding octogenarians and the evidence of ordinary people’s senses. Above all, Biden’s continued candidacy implicitly discredits the main Democratic campaign theme: Democracy itself is on the line in 2024.”
There are a lot of Democrats walking around with this assumption that at some point between now and Election Day, Biden is going to leap ahead of Trump in the polls and everything will turn out okay.
My Washington Post op-ed colleague Perry Bacon recently said, “I think Biden can still win. Not because of him but because I hope/imagine/wishcast that on Oct. 16, or so, it clicks that Donald Trump could be president against [sic] and voters/civic society/the business community/everyone rises to stop that.” There’s this belief that the electorate isn’t really paying attention — I mean, Trump just got shot, that sort of thing gets people’s attention! — or taking the election seriously.
There is very little reason to think that an American electorate that has been expressing a small but real preference for Trump all year long is going to suddenly change its mind, based upon the same old message that Democrats have been using for the past six months, day in and day out.
ADDENDUM: Fun fact: You know who was analyzing the rise of Donald Trump for National Review in February 2016?
[Ted] Cruz does well where people regularly go to church; Trump does better where they don’t. The so-called Evangelical split is just a mirage, a consequence of a country (and a state) that mostly self-identifies as Christian but manages to largely avoid the pews.
J. D. Vance, then “a writer and biotech executive” with a forthcoming book. That book, of course, was Hillbilly Elegy.