When J. D. Vance took the podium at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last night, it was with lofty expectations from critics and supporters alike. He may not have been a surprise pick to be the vice-presidential nominee, but he was a bold one for his youth (39), intelligence (bestselling author, Yale Law School), and ferocious America First-style nationalism. (See Jacob Heilbrunn’s terrific piece on this.) But by the time the self-described hillbilly left the stage, it was a big “meh.” No wonder the headlines the following day were, not only understandably, dominated by high-level leaks about pressure on President Joe Biden to drop out of the race but also more findings about the would-be Donald Trump assassin and how the U.S. Secret Service failed to prevent him from shooting the former president. Vance’s headlines were way down your scroll, not just because he got a late start with much of his speech running after 11:00 pm on the East Coast.
It’s not that Vance doesn’t have a compelling biography—up from southern Ohio, a mom who struggled with addiction, an absent father, a colorful grandmother, service in the Marines, literary fame at an early age, a South Asian wife, and cute kids. With his precocious memoir, a stint editing the law review, and marrying a fellow smart lawyer, the freshman senator has some intriguing parallels to Barack Obama, who also busted out in his first term in the Senate to be nominated at a national convention.
And it’s not that the structure of the speech was inherently flawed. He weaved his biography alongside Biden’s 50-plus years in elective office—excoriating the North American Free Trade Agreement that Biden championed and was ratified when Vance was in elementary school as well as the Iraq War resolution Biden voted for while JD was in the Marines following 9/11. Traditional second banana tributes to the man atop the ticket were peppered throughout.
But Vance’s delivery was flat and, at times, not much better than the head of the sales department giving a go-get-’em-tiger speech to their team at the Chevy dealership. He was easily distracted by cheers from the Ohio section of the crowd, and efforts at firing up cheers like “Joe gotta go” were weak. This was nothing like the genuinely electrifying if a little weird, speech Sarah Palin delivered at the 2008 Republican convention, and it didn’t hold the crowd as did Mike Pence’s acceptance speech in Cleveland in 2016. (Pence was not tapped this time because, as the comedian D.L. Hughley joked, “Trump has to replace his former VP cuz he tried to have him killed!”) Vance’s pandering to the Great Lakes swing states became risible after a while. He mentioned Pennsylvania six times, Michigan six, and Wisconsin three. We get it.
The cultural pandering to rural Red Americans was also over the top, including his what-a-character descriptions of his grandmother, Mamaw, who was surely a formidable figure who loved and raised him. Still, the anecdote about the old woman having 19 loaded handguns stashed around the house was as unsettling as it might have been endearing. The Republican crowd did love it.
In Vance’s rendering, small-town America was both a city on a hill and a victim of shadowy forces:
I grew up in Middletown, Ohio, a small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands, and loved their God, their family, their community, and their country with their whole hearts.
But it was also a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington.
A higher minimum wage, easier path to union membership, support for community colleges, and child tax credits—Democratic policies—would ameliorate the ruling class rule, as would antitrust enforcement, which, to Vance’s credit, he supports. He’s had kind words for Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan.
Intellectually, most of the speech was ramshackle and brimming with resentment. Washington and Wall Street have chewed up American towns like his. That’s not wrong, but he also veered off course. (He blamed high housing costs, in part, on immigrants and Wall Street crashing the economy. However, in his critique of the financial sector, he omitted that the wild expansion of mortgages and the crazed market in mortgage-backed securities caused the financial crisis. Too much to get into in a speech, I know, but it’s different than his suggestion that Wall Street contracted the supply of housing when, in fact, its greed recklessly expanded it.)
On immigration, Vance wisely praised his immigrant in-laws, who were the model of coming here the right way.
But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms. That’s the way we preserve the continuity of this project from 250 years past to hopefully 250 years in the future. And let me illustrate this with a story, if I may.
Vance’s talk was notable for what he did not say and what most GOP keynote speakers did not say. There was no Trumpian complaining about the Deep State, stolen elections, Hillary Clinton, Merrick Garland, AOC, or Hunter Biden. Abortion went unmentioned—and nothing about cutting spending, entitlements, or the national debt. Only the mass deportation signs in the crowd, still left from preceding speeches, gave away the game.
Vance did himself some good. He seemed pleasant, which is not a quality found in abundance among the convention speakers. Donald Trump, Jr, who introduced his friend, Vance, bared his fangs save for a nice handoff to his daughter, praising Grandpa. The presidential nominee’s namesake had a litany of complaints about his persecuted père. It reminded me a bit of the oh-so-hyped John Edwards, who proved a bust for the John Kerry ticket in 2004 despite great expectations. The later disgraced senator never wooed votes in rural America and lost his debate to the charismatically challenged Dick Cheney. At a very rough moment for Democrats, Vance’s so-so speech offered a tiny bit of solace, at least for the moment.
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