Given how impetuous Donald Trump is, his vice-president, JD Vance, strikes some Americans as a more stable alternative. A good bet, some of the Maga faithful believe, as the 2028 Republican nominee for president, and the eventual occupant of the Oval Office.
Every bit as rightwing as Trump but more serious and predictable – that seems to be Vance’s pitch to the public. And he clearly wants to be president; he’s as ambitious as they come.
Why, then, does he keep saying such loony things?
In recent weeks alone, the Catholic convert has suggested that Pope Leo – the head of the Catholic church, after all – should be careful when discussing theology.
Vance also has declared that the Watergate scandal and its cover-up were no big deal, and that it’s absurd that these (clearly corrupt) acts should have brought down President Nixon.
He even described as “troubling” the Vatican’s welcoming views on immigration. Vance went so far as to say such tolerance – echoed in lawn signs that say, for example, “no person is illegal” – run against core Catholic beliefs. The well-known Jesuit priest Father James Martin SJ pushed back hard, noting Jesus’s clear message of caring for strangers and saying Vance had it all wrong.
Add this to Vance’s scorn, during the 2024 presidential campaign, for single women as “childless cat ladies”. (He has since disavowed those comments.)
Or recall his spreading the ugly lie that Haitian-Americans were stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
What exactly is all this craziness intended to accomplish? Why would a guy who wants to be president make a practice of unnecessarily insulting huge swaths of the electorate and going up against a hugely popular American-born pope?
Strange as it seems, his outrageous comments – presented as if they are the product of a thoughtful, serious person – are no accident.
Vance is sending a clear message to Trump’s dedicated base that he’s just as good at stirring up hate and grievance as the man they elected twice as president. Better at it than the more moderate Marco Rubio, the secretary of state who is his most likely competitor for the 2028 Republican nomination.
In essence, he’s saying something like this: I might have written serious books and have a law degree from Yale but don’t worry, I hate the same people you do. And governmental malfeasance doesn’t rattle me.
As former labor secretary Robert Reich wrote recently, “Vance resembles Trump in every way – he lies effortlessly, he’s utterly without principle, and he’s intent on gaining power – except that he’s smarter and more ruthless than Trump.” Thus, a more dangerous demagogue.
So far, most American citizens are not buying Vance’s act. His popularity, which started off the latest Trump term in positive territory, now is “underwater”. As CNN’s Harry Enten put it recently, he’s a historically unpopular vice-president.
Enten blamed this partly on Vance’s forays into international affairs, as when he campaigned for Hungary’s Viktor Orbán this past spring. (Orbán lost his re-election bid as prime minister.)
More recently, as the US waged its ill-advised war with Iran, Vance has been dispatched to represent the White House.
All of this when most Americans prefer the administration to focus on domestic issues.
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Amid all this, Vance’s attention-getting utterances about Catholic teachings or Richard Nixon’s renaissance have a desperate quality.
Scratch their surface and you see exactly what he’s trying to do: stand up strong for intolerance and corruption.
It doesn’t seem like a winning message, especially when paired with record-setting unpopularity.
But it may make him the obvious successor to Trump. And that, after all, is exactly what JD Vance is angling for.
