So I asked my colleagues Ramesh Ponnuru and Jason Willick. What does this choice mean for the party’s future?
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Megan McArdle: What does this choice mean for not only the current Republican Party but also the future of the Republican Party?
Jason Wirick: At 39, Vance is exactly half Trump’s age. It’s certainly a generational shift, but it also represents continuity in terms of the party’s trajectory toward populism and non-interventionism. Another observation is that since the assassination attempt, Trump has been signaling the importance of unity. Vance’s selection is not meant to signal unity within or outside the party, but rather to reassure supporters that his campaign will remain aggressive and confrontational.
Ramesh Ponnuru: No vice presidential nominee has risen so quickly since Richard Nixon. Trump’s choice of Vance shows just how willing he is to let bygones be bygones. It’s hard to imagine a candidate from either party nominating someone who once likened himself to Hitler. And, as Meghan suggests, it means not just that Trump has a successor, but also that Trumpism, which Vance is developing into an actual governing vision rather than just an impulse.
Jason: As much as we project ideological weight onto this selection, we should not forget that Vance has been ideologically flexible in the past.
Ramesh: I think Vance’s change was sincere and motivated — he had a clear political motivation to become a Trump supporter, but it was consistent with his existing views and personality — and over time people learn how to convince themselves that what they’re saying is right, and that in fact they should go further.
Megan: Many of my Never-Trump friends argue that Vance is far worse than Donald Trump, that he’s like Trump but more competent, combining the neoliberal genius of a Yale Law School graduate with the populist persona of a working-class kid from Middletown, Ohio. The counterargument is that the persona is contrived, and the real Vance is the guy who wanted the establishment to be 15 percent less detached from reality, and who will actually be in power when Trump is out. What do you think? Does Vance portend a less radical or more radical future for the party than it was under Trump?
Jason: It depends on what you mean by extreme. Vance’s politically “extreme” rhetoric peaked during the 2022 Ohio Senate primary. For example, he suggested that Trump should ignore the courts in his second term. Since he became a senator, this kind of rhetoric has faded. My impression is that he was trying to go too far in trying to vindicate MAGA after openly chanting Never Trump in 2016. Only he knows where his heart is.
Megan: What role do you see Trump playing in the party and in the White House over the next four years (assuming he stays healthy to the end of his second term)?
Jason: Vice presidents have historically played a relatively important role in foreign policy compared to domestic policy, and Vance’s anti-Ukraine aid stance was a key feature of his time as a senator. I believe he holds sincerely to the non-interventionist views that were influenced by his time in the military. I think he will play a role in pushing Trump’s foreign policy in a more restrained direction.
Ramesh: If Trump Vance were elected, I suspect Vance would take into consideration Trump’s reluctance to draw attention to himself. He would certainly be Trump’s ambassador in MAGAville, but I also think he would want and have a say on many aspects of policy. He would never resist Trump’s instincts on trade or foreign policy.
Jason: Of course, Trump likes his subordinates to compete with each other, so it remains to be seen whether Vance’s selection heralds an overall more populist and restrained Trump team, or whether Trump seeks to balance things out with Mike Pompeo and Tom Cotton. The latter seems more likely.
Megan: The fact that President Trump is less interested in policy details probably gives him more leeway than most vice presidents.
Jason: Yes, I expect Vance to be a key policy player in the White House, but can you talk about whether his selection makes it more or less likely that Trump will return to the White House?
Megan: Sure, say what you will, MAGA white men aren’t exactly the ones balancing the ticket, but does that matter?
Jason: I think this choice was a political mistake. From a political and polling standpoint, almost everything has worked in Trump’s favor in recent weeks, but the election is not yet decided. Vance will be an easy target for opposition ad makers and will scare off Republican donors. Some of the other candidates on the shortlist also had the potential to generate political and fundraising benefits that Vance does not have.
Ramesh: I think this selection shows how confident Trump is of victory and how much loyalty he expects from the next administration. The only thing that would change is if the VP made a huge mistake, which is unlikely with Vance.
Jason: There is a common belief that the choice of vice presidential candidate is politically unimportant. This election At the very least, Kamala Harris will receive a disproportionate amount of attention (due to President Biden’s weakness and the possibility that she could replace him), which I think alone makes the second spot on the shortlist even more important.
Megan: Well, I wonder if “the vice president doesn’t matter” is empirically true under normal circumstances where “people in their 70s don’t go up against people in their 80s,” but maybe not this year.
Ramesh: There are high expectations for Vance going into the debate with Harris, but I think he is much more agile and will do better.
Megan: Ramesh, I think you’re right because Harris was not only agile, but also underwhelming in the high-pressure debates, and I’ve found that being a prosecutor teaches you to ask questions effectively, but not necessarily to answer them.
Jason: From my perspective, at least, Harris outperformed Mike Pence in the 2020 debates, but Vance is undoubtedly very intelligent and likely to be a good debater.
Megan: Finally, let’s talk a little bit about policy. If J.D. Vance becomes your successor, how will the future Republican Party be different from the current one? What are the biggest differences between him and Trump? How does a disciple differ from his master?
Ramesh: Vance would be more consistent: He would not, for example, advocate for more legal immigration or avoid a Ukraine-Russia war.
Jason: One difference is that Vance has expressed far more “traditionally conservative” positions on traditional social issues like abortion, but he is now taking a more cautious stance on those issues to accommodate Trump’s new policies.
Ramesh: …and perhaps also to his own interpretation of political reality.
Jason: Let me put it this way: There’s been a fierce battle on the center-right to define what “true” Trumpism is. Many on the populist and isolationist right have been leading the charge in defining Trumpism. But many on the more establishment right have tried to claim Trumpism, at least when it comes to foreign policy, highlighting some of his hawkish impulses. With Vance as Trump’s successor, the establishment and interventionists in the Republican Party, people like Mitch McConnell, are forced to confront the fact that their views are increasingly in the minority within their party. So I think again that the policy shift will be most significant in foreign policy.
Megan: Is Pax Americana Fading Away?
Jason: To be honest, I think the end of Pax Americana is near anyway.
Ramesh: I think that if Vance becomes vice president, it will increase the chances of a fairly big shift in the Republican Party’s economic policy. The Trump administration has been pretty traditionally Republican on taxes and regulations, except on trade policy. Vance is signaling that a second administration would be different. In December 2017, about half of the Republican senators voted to roll back the corporate tax cut and expand the child tax credit. The Trump administration was stunned. I think that if Vance had been a senator, he would have voted for these changes.
Jason: Probably. But the irony is that Republicans probably had a greater opportunity to tackle a big social policy agenda in Trump’s first term than they would have had in his second, which would have likely come at a time of persistently large budget deficits and barely contained inflation. Democrats attempted a big social policy agenda in 2021, leading to inflation that threatened to cost them the White House.
Megan: I just wish there were more people like J.D. Vance, who wrote “Hillbilly Elegy,” and fewer people like the mega-MAGA warriors, but I will admit that political motivations are working in the other direction.
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Brain dump
- Washington Post reporter Jim Geraghty’s reaction to Vance’s selection: “Choosing Vance is the biggest bet Trump has ever made on himself.” Read more.
- The Post’s Matt Bayh wrote a scathing critique of Vance in May. Read it here:
- Another great read by Simon Van Zuilen Wood in the Washington Post: “How Vance transformed into a far-right ideologue.”
- Consider this message from the Washington Post editorial board’s opinion piece following the assassination attempt on President Trump: “Turn off the heat and let in the light.”
