In an election cycle with a sitting vice president suddenly elevated to become her party’s nominee, and a former president, now the challenger, grazed by an assassin’s bullet, the American people have gotten a crash course in why veeps matter, whether it’s Tim Walz or J.D. Vance.
On the Republican side, Donald Trump at age 78 is the oldest person to run for president. He got a lot of mileage out of making fun of President Biden as too old and infirm to lead the country for another four years, and he was right. Now the tables have been turned, and 40-year-old Vance represents the future of the GOP, not Trump, who will be a lame duck the moment he sets foot back in the Oval Office should he win the election in November.
Vance is trying hard to deliver the whole Trump thing—the misogyny, the rollicking joy in taking on the elites—but it’s not transferable. There’s only one Trump show, and Vance doesn’t add votes. “He represents a choice by Trump to double down rather than reach out—a choice that pleases the base and no one else as far as I can tell,” says Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
