Is J.D. Vance Our Guy?
For the veep, it would seem a time for choosing.
Vice President J.D. Vance should have touched down in Islamabad today for round two of peace talks with Iran, but at the time of writing, negotiations have been put on ice. The last-minute cancellation undermines the Official Media Narrative™, which liberal outlets like the New York Times have been suspiciously eager to propound: Vance has opposed the war in cabinet meetings, and now he has a golden opportunity to end it, saving his political fortunes in the process.
Vance tends to inspire wishful thinking, and attracting positive projection isn’t a bad quality in a politician. Mark Halperin, a veteran journalist with a knack for horserace election coverage, wrote last week in the Daily Mail that Vance’s team exudes “zero panic” about 2028, believing their man remains a frontrunner for the GOP nomination. Halperin seems to think they’re not optimistic enough: “If the election were held today, Vance would still be the most likely next occupant of the Oval Office. Not by a whisker, but by a margin.”
All of the above—from the Iran war hopes to the 2028 dreams—sounds, to me, utterly fanciful. Round one in Islamabad seemed to make the two-week ceasefire even more fragile, with President Donald Trump announcing a blockade of the Hormuz Strait right afterwards. (This Tuesday, Trump extended the ceasefire hours before it was set to expire, but for all we know he’s just setting up another sneak attack.) As for the next presidential elections, here’s a fact Halperin didn’t mention: Vance is the least popular vice president ever, having plummeted 21 points in public approval since taking office.
Still, 2028 is a long way away, and if Vance can secure some kind of diplomatic understanding with Iran that averts the resumption of war, he’ll lay the groundwork for a political comeback. But to win the presidency, Vance will need to answer a question that more and more people are asking: Who is he?
First, he’s a man of contradictions:
- Vance presents himself as a “hillbilly” populist from Appalachia. Yet he’s a graduate of Yale Law School, a political ally of right-wing tech tycoons, and chief fundraiser for the Republican Party.
- Echoing the kind of conservatives who lament “Third-World migration,” Vance says that America is a “particular people,” not an idea or economic zone. At the Republican National Convention in 2024, Vance waxed poetic about his many ancestors buried in a cemetery plot in eastern Kentucky. Yet Vance’s wife, and so also his kids, are of Indian heritage.
- Vance is the preferred candidate of conservative “restrainers,” who favor a less militaristic foreign policy. He’s said that his opposition to forever wars stems from the disillusionment he experienced as a Marine fighting in them. Yet Vance has become an apologist for the military adventures of the second Trump administration, including the war with Iran.
I could go on, but you get the idea (and in journalism, “three makes a trend,” so it’s my right to stop there). The story that Vance tells about himself seems increasingly detached from the Ding an sich, the thing itself—the man as he appears to truly be.
This widening gulf threatens to worsen a reputational issue that has bedeviled Vance for years: the perception that he doesn’t really believe anything and merely strives for power. The conservative political columnist Gerard Baker recently wrote that when you search for “Vance’s defining identity, the soul of his true self, there is nothing there, only a pile of receipts from a succession of useful transactions.”
Acquaintances of Vance insist that such charges are unfair, that he holds convictions and adheres to principles even if he, like all politicians, must sometimes make compromises. Regardless, the perception poses a serious problem. Americans prefer political candidates who seem authentically relatable and candid about their private views, as academic studies have shown (political “scientists” have a penchant for proving the obvious).
And as Jude Russo, the managing editor of The American Conservative, noted on a recent episode of TAC Right Now, Vance “has no political profile that preexists the Trump moment.” By contrast, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vance’s chief rival in the looming battle to succeed Trump, built a political career from the ground up, establishing an essential identity distinct from the president he currently serves.
For Vance, riding shotgun in the Trump wagon has been perilous (though not as physically dangerous as for Mike Pence, on whom Trump sicced a rabid mob during the January 6 Capitol riot). Vance doesn’t steer Trump’s decision-making, though he’s compelled to defend the crashing results—and to square them with his own political persona.
So when Trump launched a war with Iran, the collateral damage was Vance’s restrainer bona fides. And when Trump instigated a spat with Pope Leo, who has criticized the U.S. war with Iran, the Catholic convert Vance found himself pitted against the Vicar of Christ. “I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology,” Vance said last week.
Good Lord, that’s bad.
Vance gave those remarks during an event hosted by Turning Point USA, an organization for young conservatives. His appearance highlighted the bind in which Vance finds himself on religion, foreign policy, and everything in between. “Jesus Christ does not support genocide!” yelled one heckler as Vance criticized the pope’s views on war and peace. “You’re bombing children!” Vance handled the awkward moment reasonably well, but he seemed hot under the collar.
A less contentious moment was equally telling. Asked which “influencer” he would recommend for young conservatives, Vance listed the TPUSA moderator sitting to his right, the comedian podcaster Theo Von, and himself. It was not just a tacky answer, but an evasive one.
Unmentioned by Vance was America’s most prominent conservative commentator, who happens to be a friend of the vice president: Tucker Carlson. In recent weeks, Trump and Carlson have been attacking one another in escalatingly heated terms. Vance, by not recommending the latter, sided, in effect, with the former. Days later, news broke that Tucker Carlson’s son Buckley, who had served as deputy press secretary for Vance, was leaving the post.
The younger Carlson says he’s starting a political consulting firm, but the move followed pressure from pro-Israel activists looking for a scalp. I wrote last November that Vance can strike a balance in the right’s “civil war” over Israel. But that seems more difficult now, thanks to an actual war with Iran. The Zionists want the U.S. to “finish the job” and destroy Israel’s main adversary, and they demand obeisance from Vance, whom they don’t trust. Meanwhile, conservatives who prefer Vance over Rubio believe the U.S. launched the war on Israel’s behalf and want him to secure the peace. Neither side is looking to compromise.
Now’s a time for choosing: Which side is Vance on? He’s been courting billionaire megadonors, including pro-Israel extremists like Miriam Adelson. Perhaps he’s their man. And yet, behind the scenes Vance has opposed the war with Iran, assuming America’s top newspapers have got the story right. So perhaps he’s ours. Instead of recommending we listen to Theo Von, Vance should tell us, and prove to us, where he really stands—so that we can find another candidate if needed.
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