Republican vice presidential nominee J D Vance and Former US president Donald Trump. (AP and Reuters Photo)
Overzealous readers between the lines might look at the photo-shopped image of J D Vance, circulated by MAGA supporters a day before the vice-presidential debate, and conclude that those backing Donald Trump’s second presidential bid are not entirely happy with his pick for running mate. A misguided, if well-meaning, hand has taken Vance’s official Senate portrait and given the Senator from Ohio the chiselled jaw that nature perhaps never intended him to have. What was the need for this, one might wonder, when Vance’s face – with its decidedly soft contours – has become one of the most well-known across the US since Trump put him on the ticket in July.
Was this an expression of a subliminal desire for a more square-jawed, “strong” VP pick, someone who could credibly defend every one of his indefensible positions? Is it not enough that, in his many interviews, Vance has aired precisely the kind of views that Trump’s most ardent supporters would wish to hear (including the dog whistle about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating people’s pets, repeated by Trump at his debate last month with Kamala Harris)?
Before the Monday night event, Vance was polled as one of the most unpopular V-P picks of recent times, not least because there are those within the Republican party who view him askance, uncomfortable with his switch around from the times when he declared Trump “unfit” for office and compared him to Hitler. And it’s unclear whether his performance in the debate helped boost his ratings with the public or his popularity in the GOP. What is evident, however, is that Vance will do everything he can — lie, distort, evade — to support Trump’s campaign for the White House.
From the perspective of those Americans who wish for constitutional values and public duty to be upheld, this may be far from ideal, but as Walz pointed out during the debate, this is precisely why Vance is on the ticket instead of Trump’s former V-P, Mike Pence — the latter had certified the 2020 election results that the former president, even today, continues to describe as “stolen”. For taking a principled position, albeit a bit late in the day, Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, called for “hanging” Pence and the former president himself described his V-P as a “wimp”.
Then there is Trump’s 2024 running mate, completely passing over the events of that day, and describing, on live TV, how Trump “peacefully” transferred power to the Joe Biden dispensation a few days later on January 20. In what was his strongest moment in the debate, his opponent Timothy J Walz rightly called this obfuscation out for what it was. He asked Vance whether or not Trump had lost the 2020 election and dismissed the response — a vague fumble about looking to the “future” – as a “damning non-answer”. In that one moment towards the end of the debate, all the warmth and hillbilly-relatability that Vance had summoned for the evening, the undeniable debating chops that he has honed since his days at Yale Law School and the affability — even sympathy — he displayed on stage towards Walz, proved to be what they were: Camouflage for what is, ultimately, a naked pursuit of power.
It is a quality that Trump perhaps recognises, which may explain why he chose the 40-year-old Vance — who, till four years ago, had referred to the former president as an “idiot” and criticised him for failing to deliver on his populist economic policies — over more experienced Republicans. Not only has Vance overcome any qualms he may have once had over Trump’s politics and policies — going so far as to say that he would not have certified the 2020 election results — he has even swallowed public humiliation of the kind meted out by the billionaire candidate at Vance’s own rally for the 2022 Senate race. At a time when the Ohio native, having already recanted his previous views, was actively courting the former president’s endorsement for his candidature, Trump told the crowd, “J D is kissing my a**, he wants my support so bad.”
The Republican nominee is a man who, above all, demands total, unquestioning allegiance from his supporters. For him, the extremely bendable Vance was the only possible V-P pick, fantasies of a squarer jaw notwithstanding.
pooja.pillai@expressindia.com
