Donald Trump’s choice of JD Vance for vice president is very exciting, and illustrates how Trump has conquered and transformed his party.
When Trump ran with Mike Pence in 2016, it was a same-sex wedding to the Republican establishment. Pence was an orthodox conservative; insiders hoped that he might temper his boss. Vance, by contrast, is a total product of the populist revolution.
Born to a blue-collar family in southwest Ohio, with a traumatic upbringing made famous by his book Hillbilly Elegy, Vance embodies the left-behind people Trump seeks to represent – ground down by low paid work and an unhealthy culture (his mother struggled with addiction). A former marine and venture capitalist, he was critical of Trump in 2016, even comparing him to Hitler. But Vance warmed to his views on free trade, immigration and foreign intervention, and gradually established himself as an unofficial philosopher of the Maga movement.
In 2022, he won the GOP nod for Senate for Ohio following Trump’s endorsement. In other words, Trump has picked a man who owes his career and political identity to… Trump. This is a potential successor, a man who can carry the torch of his revolution, perhaps giving it the intellectual coherence it otherwise lacks.
If Trump is motored by instinct, Vance, a convert to Catholicism, proceeds by philosophy. As a senator, he has been a textbook social conservative, yet defended social security and attacked big banks. This is unusual on the American Right, perhaps closer to European Christian democracy. It’s a politics aimed squarely at the values and needs of the working-class.
Moderates will be disappointed – some fantasised that Nikki Haley’s return to the convention meant she might join the ticket – and critics will pore over Vance’s opposition to the war in Ukraine.
But for anyone who cares about the future of conservatism and the art of politics, this is a win. Vance will wipe the floor with Kamala Harris at the VP debate. And as parts of the Right descend into know-nothing anti-intellectualism, Vance will bring ideas to the next White House.
Trump has done something highly unusual. He’s picked a VP candidate who would make a better president than him.
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