The Devolution of JD Vance

I can't think of another who has fallen so far

“Why are you so obsessed with US politics, Chuck?”

Well, I’m not, actually, but I’ve spent my lifetime in and around politics, and my professional role and experience make me a non-partisan in the Canadian context (more on that another time). US politics have one major advantage for me, which is that my interest is largely academic. Of course it’s very important how the world’s largest superpower conducts its democracy, but the implications for me are less direct. This allows me to enjoy the thing for its own sake - sort of like watching a Superbowl that the Pats aren’t playing in. So here we are.

My time in and around politicians has left me with a generally very high opinion of them. Whatever their party or ideology, I have found the vast majority of them to be well-meaning. It is a very difficult arena in which to serve, and even worse in today’s age of hyper-partisanship and social media. Good people sacrifice their private lives and job security to try and better their communities, only to be viciously attacked because everyone doesn’t agree with them about everything. So I start my approach to most political figures with a bit of sympathy. Maybe not a full presumption of innocence, but something more akin to “tie goes to the baserunner.” If you are a politician and you say something, I’m generally going to assume you meant it the best way possible, even if your phrasing was hella awkward (“black jobs”? Yikes!).

I start with some biases. I love an underdog story, and when someone who was born into poverty makes good, I’m rooting for them. I also have a longstanding concern about wealth inequality and how dangerous it is for a democracy’s leadership to lose sight of their sacred trust to improve the lot of those less fortunate. I saw that play out as Donald Trump somehow managed to flip rustbelt Obama voters, a bizarre outcome which I largely explain as a Democrat own-goal.

In the aftermath of Trump’s win in 2016, I think a lot of us felt the need to recalibrate. We had known for a while that working-class voters felt unheard and un-cared for by their governments. That their alienation was so great they would elect Donald Trump was a troubling surprise.

That’s round about the time I first heard of JD Vance.

Hillbilly Elegy talked about things very few elites talked about, and the author wrote from personal experience. I read it, and I was glad I did, because I felt it helped me understand something a bit better. However, there was something about the tone of the book I found off-putting. Maybe I was unrealistically hoping for more of a Horatio Alger vibe. I agreed with some of what Vance wrote, and I sympathized with him overall, but I didn’t really like him. His tone seemed hollow at times. Yes, there were heartbreaking anecdotes about his experiences with his family, but it felt to me that he didn’t really care for the people he grew up around. It was as if he somehow blamed them for their lot in life. I’m a great believer in the power that comes from taking responsibility for yourself, but it felt like a story of people trapped in a pit, trying to get out by trampling each other and pulling the people above them down. I didn’t give this a lot of thought, I guessed maybe Vance wasn’t a great writer (no shame in that) or perhaps those odd notes were the product of his childhood trauma. I’m sure writing a book about your addict mother is very tough. I tried to be generous. I was glad the book had been written, and I was glad I read it, but I didn’t enjoy it.

Elegy gave Vance a platform to talk about a lot of issues, and Donald Trump was foremost among them. This is where babyface JD Vance won me over. At a time when a lot of people were drinking the kool-aid, and both I and Dave Chappelle were reserving judgment, Vance was absolutely clear-eyed on who and what Donald Trump was.

In 2016, Vance had an interview on a podcast called The Matt Jones Podcast, in which the host said, “I cannot stand Trump because I think he is a total fraud who is exploiting these people.” Vance agreed saying, “I do too.” Vance wrote an article for the New York Times in which he described Trump as “unfit for our nation’s highest office.” Vance’s tweets were more of the same, often including heartfelt invocation of his Christian faith. That impressed me, particularly at a time when so much of the US Evangelical community had gone all-in for the most vulgarly immoral candidate I’d ever seen run for President.

Vance’s opinion of Trump didn’t change after the election- well, not at first, anyway:

And if you think what Vance said publicly about Trump was critical, privately he was even more harsh:

In 2016 I assumed that Trump couldn’t possibly be as bad as he turned out to be, so I can forgive someone giving Trump a chance, only to realize “Nope, turns out this guy is even worse than I feared.” I’m in favour of people learning, growing, and changing their minds. But who all these years later, goes in the other direction? What possible evidence is there that 2024 Donald Trump is actually far better than we thought he might be in 2016?

I tell you who: opportunists. That’s not unheard of in politics, and some might say it’s unavoidable, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. More than this, it just feels off. Bearded JD who is running as Trump’s VP pick feels like the Mirror Universe’s evil twin of Never-Trumper JD who wrote Hillbilly Elegy.

If you got the reference, good for you. Live Long and Prosper.

When I see JD Vance now, it’s not so much the whiff of opportunism which overwhelms me, it’s the inauthenticity. Maybe I’m being too generous to Vance, but I am just not buying that he’s actually converted. Vance’s interviews and speeches sound hollow to me, like a bad actor reading cue cards.

Trump is a narcissist who thinks only of himself, but his mania gives him an air of authenticity. Trump doesn’t sound like other politicians. Vance on the other hand has no energy. Maybe I’m projecting, but Vance never sounds like his heart is in it.

If Vance was just a phony he’d be mediocre, but unremarkable. However, it feels like something else is going on. I am cautious against calling anyone weird, because I’ve been told (by people who care about me) I’m rather weird. They are kind and use words like “eccentric”, or “unique” but I get their drift. So glass houses, etc, but still, something about Vance feels “off” to me. The best way I can describe it is like this: every time JD Vance speaks on an issue, it sounds as if he is trying to reductio ab absurdum himself in real time.

Take the issue of “families”. This is literally a motherhood and apple pie issue, and over the years many politicians have courted social conservatives by expressing support for “family values”. History has proven that this appeal works best when you stay positive, praising families as “the cornerstones of our society”. If you veer into criticizing “non-traditional" families, people will see you as judgmental, unsympathetic to single mothers, homophobic, and what have you.

Let me be clear: I think having kids can reorient your worldview in an amazing, selfless and positive way. It certainly did for me. I believe parenting my kids is the most important thing I will do in this life. Some days I feel like it’s the only important thing I do. Having seen the change it made in me, I can agree that it can make people better: more other-focused, and more invested in the future of our planet. I get the argument that families = good. That’s not a new idea. But mooting the notion that people with kids should have more votes than childless people? Say what, now? I’m all for challenging existing norms, but who takes a kick at “one person, one vote”? Maybe some crankpot deep in his cups at closing time at the local pub, or some bearded lunatic writing his version of the Unabomber Manifesto alone in the dark at night (warning: possible self-own detected). But not a serious politician from a mainstream party on the national stage, surely. And yet…

Likewise, I have never seen anyone express their thoughts in and around this issue by disparaging “childless cat ladies”. What is that? It sounds mean-spirited and outright cruel. Good luck ever getting a vote from anyone who has struggled with infertility. Facing a gender gap in support for the GOP and a woman nominee from the DNC, is there a more artless way to express yourself? I’m a right-thinking person who understands that dogs are man’s best friend, but even I know there’s no reasoning with cat people, so why even go there? More than half of all US households with pets have a cat. You’re trying to win an election here, JD, is this a hill you want to die on?

Cats are the familiars of witches and the agents of Satan on Earth, and I repeatedly made it crystal clear to my wife and children that we would never have one. In unrelated news, this is your humble author at rest. And Poppy. Poppy lives with us now.

The “childless cat ladies” thing is not a one-off. Trump faces a challenge to win non-white votes, a challenge surely made more acute by the elevation of Harris to the top of the DNC ballot. Meanwhile the GOP has a problem with racism, and Trump keeps cozying up to white supremacists and Great Replacement conspiracy nut-jobs. As good fortune would have it, JD Vance has a “get out of jail free card” on this issue: the woman to whom Vance has pledged his undying love and loyalty to in a marriage covenant, his soulmate and the mother of his three adorable children, is the beautiful and talented daughter of Indian parents.

Usha and JD Vance

Megyn Kelly teed Vance up on this, asking him to respond to white supremacist attacks on his wife. Oy vey, talk about your softballs. All JD Vance has to say when he’s asked about this is some version of “I love my multi-racial family and if it bothers some racists that I love whom I love, well, they can kiss my pasty white behind”. OK perhaps some version of that which channels a bit less Harry Truman. “…then that’s their problem” or “I’m not going to lose any sleep about that”. Seriously, there’s a hundred ways you can respond to this sort of thing, and 99 out of those100 are fine. Which brings us to what JD Vance said:

"Obviously, she's not a white person, and we've been accused — attacked — by some white supremacists over that. But I just — I love Usha. She's such a good mom, she's such a brilliant lawyer and I'm so proud of her.”

Come on, man. “Obviously she’s not a white person?” Are you not coming to full-throated defense of your wife because you don’t want to offend white supremacists? My dude, you must do better than this. You must be better than this.

Seriously though, Vance is like this on everything. Last example: A couple of times a year we change our clocks. It’s a hassle and a disruption and an annoyance. I know it’s not the biggest issue in the world, but I’m sure at some point you’ve talked about it.

Picture the scene: On a spring Monday morning, a group of sleep-deprived coworkers gather around the office coffee machine, desperately trying to jumpstart their brains with caffeine. Someone curses DST and the horse it rode in on. Widespread grumbles of agreement. Others chime in with their gripes: the increase in traffic accidents, how hard it was to get the kids up, we don’t all have to milk cows any more, what is this bs anyway? The hockey games start too late, lost productivity, obligatory misses-the-point joke from someone about Newfoundland getting an extra half hour of sleep last night. Then out of the blue “JD from accounting” drops this little nugget into the chat:

Awkward silence, followed by throat clearing and people mumbling umm yeah so, I better get back to my desk.

I’m asking honestly: has anyone you’ve ever spoken to about Daylight Savings Time raised this concern? It reduces fertility by at least ten percent. Is this a thing people say? Like, at all, let alone as JD does: “with confidence”?

Vance does this so routinely that I have come to suspect he’s with me somewhere on the spectrum. See, I’m still trying to find some generous interpretation, rather than the obvious: he is an unprincipled, disingenuous, mean-spirited troll. He seems devoid of any empathy, erudition, insight, charisma, or any other quality that would make him an attractive candidate.

2024 JD Vance says things I am absolutely certain 2016 Vance would have condemned. When there was a failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Vance immediately sought to inflame the situation for partisan gain:

Vance’s latest tact, to lie and malign the military service of a man who served honourably for 20 more years than Vance did, raises the question Joseph Welch posed 70 years ago: Have you no sense of decency?

I can’t think of a single US politician who has fallen further in my estimation in such a short time than JD Vance. Only in a world where Donald Trump is the nominee would JD even be considered for the VP slot. That Vance was chosen feels like yet another testament to the depths of Trump’s pathology. Surely some day historians will look back at this era of US politics and ask “What were the GOP thinking? How could a modern, successful political party so completely lose the plot?”

That Trump corrupts and destroys all he touches is not news to me. But in 2016, a Christian who had pulled himself out of poverty and given voice to the people he left behind could see the problem clearly. Today, he is the problem. How great the fall of JD Vance. I feel pity for the man.

Maybe it’s unfair to quote The Good Book, but it feels like it’s what 2016 JD would do.