A Heartbeat Away
At the nation's most critical turning point in living memory, the worst president in U.S. history has chosen the worst running mate in U.S. History.
Donald J. Trump is the oldest candidate ever to run for President of the United States. No matter how many times he attempts to portray himself as robust and indefatigable, we’ve all witnessed him in those moments of truth — makeup melting in the desert sun, or struggling to walk down a ramp, or loping towards his golf cart because he can’t walk the course.
We’ve heard those phone calls into Fox News in the early morning hours when he, of all people, could easily arrange for a video live shot. But his vanity won’t allow that before he spends hours arranging and lacquering the remaining wisps of spun sugar on his scalp and applying the ever-present orange putty in some vain attempt to disguise his haggard face.
When he does deign to make a public appearance these days, his increasingly indecipherable collections of non sequiturs and unrelated rambling anecdotes reveal that he’s barely capable of running a retirement home bingo game, much less leading the most powerful nation in the world.
It’s bad enough that the Republican party has sunk so low that Donald J. Trump — this coup-plotting twice-impeached lifelong con artist and convicted felon — is the best they have to offer. But at age 78, there’s a very high likelihood that Trump may not live long enough to serve out a four-year term.
That leaves us in the terrifying position that the nation’s leader and commander-in-chief could be J.D. Vance, a guy whose claim to fame and rise to public prominence came from a highly exaggerated (some would say “fake”) account of his life as a “real American” — a genuine hillbilly from an impoverished background. Vance has done a complete U-turn from referring to Trump as “America’s Hitler” to becoming the ultimate Trump sycophant and wheedling his way into the running mate slot.
Consider this opinion piece from The Hill, which has hardly been known for its left-leaning positions:
To ask, “What does JD Vance believe” is to make a category error. The better question is, “What beliefs will JD Vance espouse in order to draw closer to power?”
Since Vance abandoned his “Never Trump” posture after 2017, he has taken every opportunity to endear himself to Trump and even to offer a kind of intellectual scaffolding for MAGA foreign policy. There is little reason to believe that Vance would provide a meaningful voice for restraint (on any issue other than Ukraine) in a Trump White House, or that he is interested in a long-term revision of U.S. foreign policy priorities.
— Robert Farley, The Hill, 07.20.2024
Journalists have not been kind to Vance, nor should they be. Consider this other example:
But what should we call J. D. Vance, the self-described hillbilly turned Marine turned Ivy League law-school graduate turned venture capitalist turned Senate candidate? Words fail. His perfidy to his own people in Ohio is too big to allow him to escape with the label of “opportunist,” and yet the shabbiness and absurdity of his Senate campaign is too small to brand him a defector or a heretic.
— Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 07.14.2017
Trump himself has proven himself to have very few, if any, actual firmly held beliefs. The primary motivator for any policy position he may tout is the calculation around what that position will do for him politically at that particular moment. In that respect, J.D. Vance’s willingness to change positions aligns perfectly with Trump.
To ask, “What does JD Vance believe” is to make a category error.
The better question is, “What beliefs will JD Vance espouse
in order to draw closer to power?”
Trump has also become somewhat infamous for making decisions based on the most recent voice in his ear. Apparently, Vance had been one of the most recent voices in Trump’s ear when Trump announced his selection of Vance as his running mate. By several accounts, Trump almost immediately regretted this selection as soon as President Biden announced he would not be seeking re-election. But Vance, having found himself on the ascent, was happy to remain in the spotlight, whether remaining center stage was of benefit to the campaign or not.
The area where Vance seems to be rigid in his beliefs is his belief that he knows best how everyone else ought to live their lives. This arrogance and inflexibility reveals itself not solely but most especially around the role of women in society. He has a fairly lengthy history of espousing extremist views around gender roles — views which are often even farther to the right than Trump’s views. Vance’s proclamations about the role of women have been jarring, to say the least. His earlier writings and speeches, including the now infamous “childless cat lady” talking point, are actually less extreme than his current views.
When he’s been taken to task for these extreme views, instead of softening them, he ratchets them up a few notches. (That’s something else that he and Trump have in common. Instead of backing down, they both double down.)
Like Trump, he seems to espouse his most extreme positions when he’s in front of audiences that are likely to hold the same views and, like Trump, he gets defensive pretty quickly when anyone challenges those views.
If his approach to foreign policy is anything like his approach to women’s rights and reproductive freedom, he will just expect his negotiating partners to bend to his will, no matter how extreme his positions are. He’s hardly a foreign policy wonk. He merely espouses all of Trump’s isolationist beliefs, only with marginally better sentence structure.
There’s another glaring shortcoming when you consider J.D. Vance’s foreign policy credentials (or lack thereof). Any U.S. President — and, by extension, Vice President — has a prominent position on the world stage. Interacting with foreign leaders, both friendly and hostile, is an integral component of function of the Executive Branch. Yet, here’s a guy who is so devoid of charm that he has difficulty winning over a gathering of a couple hundred people who have purposely come to hear him speak. How can we expect this charisma-deprived charlatan to handle sensitive diplomatic negotiations with world leaders? The answer is, we can’t.
If the last few weeks are any indication of the status of the Trump/Vance campaign, it’s evident that Donald Trump isn’t up to the task of campaigning. He’s been averaging a single campaign event per week. A golf game took precedence over campaigning on Labor Day, typically the unofficial start of campaign season and an opportunity to reach out to the working class for their votes. Instead, he’s using Vance, his willing toady, to do most of the heavy lifting.
If Trump is deferring to Vance during the campaign, what does that say about the way they will operate should they be elected? Will Trump’s waning vigor force him to yield his power Vance? It should frighten us all that J.D. Vance might sit behind the resolute desk, whether that’s as a proxy for Trump or as a president.