Vice presidents are more than the name below a candidate’s on campaign signs, the smiling face who introduces them at rallies and second in succession to the office. Running mates are also a vital calculation in the strategy of presidential politics, so why did Donald Trump pick JD Vance?
To understand this, it might be helpful to consider who used to be on the ticket: Mike Pence.
Trump chose Pence after winning the nomination of the Republican party in 2016. Pence was an ideal choice. He was from a midwestern state, a vital region in the electoral college. As an outspoken Christian, Pence appealed to religious Republican voters who may have questioned Trump’s devoutness. He had experience, having been both a member of the House of Representatives and the governor of Indiana.
However, their relationship was irreparably destroyed after Pence, in a typically ceremonial process of counting and certifying electoral votes, denied Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. In this period, the monolith of Make America Great Again politics gained a new dangerous tenet, what many refer to as “the big lie.”
The unprecedented denial of the results of the 2020 election spanned across state governments, with governors, senators, representatives and more taking up this position to align more closely with Trump. It wasn’t enough anymore for Republican politicians to agree with Trump’s border policy or to defend him in the news — they now were required to accept, as truth, one of the most dangerous lies to ever plague American politics.
The primary point of confusion I take with Trump’s choice of Vance over alternative candidates is a matter of MAGA loyalty. In MAGA politics, loyalty is a valuable quality in politicians who hope to align with it. I’ve seen Republican candidates in the early stages of state elections claim to be more “MAGA” than the other.
The stranglehold that Trump and his politics have over the party is so strong and his endorsements so valuable that up-and-comers within the GOP have to fall in line.
This brings us to JD Vance, author of the best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” and senator from Ohio. At first glance, he seems to be a decent pick. He checks the same box Pence did in terms of appealing to the religious right, and he aligns with Trump in many policy positions. Being an established name in Ohio gives Trump a leg-up in a key battleground state for electoral votes, and Vance’s story of success from a working-class background appeals to many as well.
In many respects, his selection seems to follow a similar logic to Pence’s. There is one glaring difference between Vance and Pence, however: his history of negative remarks toward Trump.
In a 2016 article for the New York Times, Vance wrote, “Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.” In a PBS interview with Charlie Rose, he said that he’s “never [been] a Trump guy” and that he “never liked him.”
There are a multitude of other instances in which Vance’s anti-Trump stance has shone through both in public interviews and in private messages with friends. In the last eight years, a switch must have flipped.
Perhaps Vance realized it would be faster to climb in the Republican Party by aligning with Trump than to stick with the more moderate old guard who resisted him, embodied by politicians like John McCain or, more recently, Mitt Romney. His new strategy clearly worked, as now he is on the same ticket as a person he previously referred to as “America’s Hitler.”
In hopes of finding a clearer answer to this question, I looked at interviews with Trump. One of the best endorsements I could find from Trump about Vance was from a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham where he said “he’s got tremendous support … among people that like families … he feels family is good.”
I can’t think of many potential picks that would feel that family is bad, but I digress.
Immediately after his selection, Vance was lambasted by the media for past comments, citing that “childless cat ladies” were behind the scenes in government, purposefully making the lives of Americans miserable. He is a more politically extreme choice for Trump than the alternatives that analysts at CNN predicted such as Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota, or Florida Senator Marco Rubio.
Although not immediately apparent, I think the switch from outspoken opponent to MAGA ally is what gave Vance the upper hand in his selection. His loyalty to Trump, although perhaps newly found, cannot readily be questioned. In the vice presidential debates, he skirted around answering questions about Jan. 6 and diverted when asked directly whether Trump lost the 2020 election. He may be relatively new to the MAGA game, but he’s proven to be pretty good at playing along.
