How J.D. Vance’s shocking inexperience turned into an asset
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With additional reporting from Ankush Khardori
GREEN IS GOOD — J.D. Vance wasn’t picked as Donald Trump’s running mate because he can deliver Ohio. It’s already in the tank for the GOP. And he wasn’t tapped because he’s the most qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. The entirety of his government experience consists of less than two years in the Senate.
Vance’s ascension is owed to something else entirely. He is the embodiment — and one of the most articulate defenders — of a belief system that has gradually taken hold of the Republican Party, one that prizes cultural and ideological warfare and rewards the warriors who are most effective in taking the fight to non-believers.
National politics has always been the destination for the smartest, most skilled and ambitious partisans. But the conflict itself was rarely the point, just a means to an end, and even the vice presidential nominees expected to do the campaign bladework were typically required to have some semblance of governing experience.
By historic standards, Vance has shockingly little. No experience balancing a state budget, overseeing disaster response, or wrestling with the legal and moral dimensions of the death penalty. He hasn’t commanded a state National Guard or managed a federal agency or Cabinet office. He’s less than a third into his first six-year Senate term.
Intellectual abilities aside, he hasn’t been anywhere long enough to develop a record that suggests he’s prepared to run the country. His conversion on Trump alone demonstrates he’s a work in progress, still developing new incarnations of himself.
Vance has less experience in elected office than other vice presidential nominees who were pilloried over their qualifications — most notably Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, Dan Quayle in 1988 and Sarah Palin, twenty years later. Not that long ago, it would have been a handicap that would have been a consistent and all-consuming topic of debate.
But the forces that delivered a third consecutive nomination to Trump also inexorably led to Vance as his running mate. To a party that has always viewed government as a constraint on liberty, it made perfect sense in 2016 to nominate Trump, a businessman with no prior experience in government. Whatever chaos Trump might have unleashed in the Oval Office as a result, once that hurdle had been met, it wasn’t much of a leap for a populist party with a disdain for establishment norms to settle on a vice president with just 18 months of experience in the Senate.
Vance has experience where it counts for the Trump era GOP, in the social media trenches and on cable TV hits. His Marine Corps service — Vance is the first post-9/11 veteran on a major-party ticket — insulates him on foreign policy, and offers a measure of credibility to isolationist views that once might have been dismissed as a product of a lack of seasoning.
He projects cool anger, and knows the enemy as well as anyone in the party because he’s lived and circulated among them, as a venture capitalist, a celebrated author and a Yale Law School graduate. He doesn’t deliver his home state so much as send a message to the restive regions that the GOP aspires to keep in its fold — the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
Trump spoke to these aspects of Vance’s background in announcing his pick Monday on social media, ticking off LinkedIn bullet points that individually served as dog whistles to the faithful.
It’s an about face for a party that once whacked Democratic presidents like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton for their naivete when it came to Washington and their on-the-job learning. And it’s a dramatic departure from recent veep nominees like Dick Cheney and Paul Ryan, both Washington heavyweights, and former Vice President Mike Pence, a former governor and six-term member of the House.
But that’s precisely the intention. As a 39-year-old with considerably less experience than Dan Quayle — who had several House terms and a full Senate term under his belt when he was tapped to be George H.W. Bush’s vice president — Vance’s rapid rise mirrors the GOP’s ideological realignment. He is Trump’s declaration of independence from the old Republican Party, a tacit rejection of what the GOP once valued at home and abroad.
Yet Vance’s ascent isn’t merely a function of Trump’s assault on elites and credentialism. He arrives at the end of an era dating back to 1960, when Richard Nixon campaigned on the slogan, “Experience Counts,” which was designed to highlight his background as House member, senator and two-term vice president against then junior Sen. John F. Kennedy. By 2008, a septuagenarian John McCain was prepared to hand over the keys to the White House to Palin, who was hammered for a thin resume consisting of a mayoral stint and two years as Alaska governor.
Experience, however, is no longer viewed as a badge of seriousness in either party, but especially among Republicans. Trump’s own 2016 victory came against an unusually deep and accomplished field of GOP governors and senators. He mercilessly turned their years of service in government against them all, painting them as denizens of the Washington swamp that he promised to drain.
Television cameras captured the prevailing sentiment up close at the Republican National Convention on Monday. As Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — the longest-serving Senate Republican leader in the history of the nation and godfather of the Kentucky Republican Party — stood at a microphone on the floor to nominate Trump, he was met with a resounding chorus of boos. In the midst of the awkward scene, all he could do was offer a pained smile and a thumbs up.
Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com and cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie and @calder_mchugh.
TRUMP ON TRIAL
LOOSE CANNON — Judge Aileen Cannon’s order on Monday dismissing the Justice Department’s classified-documents case against Donald Trump could hardly have come at a better time for the former president — just as Republicans kicked off their nominating convention this week and still fresh off a major victory at the Supreme Court in the other federal criminal case against him.
The cover of the RNC, however, has done little to head off the widespread criticism from legal analysts of Cannon’s startling decision, which concluded that special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. It was a major departure from decades of legal precedent supporting the use of special counsels by the Justice Department, as well as the statutes and regulations authorizing their use, POLITICO’s Ankush Khardori writes for Nightly.
For political-legal obsessives, there were at least two other immediate implications — one concerning the highly consequential question of how the Justice Department will operate in a second Trump term, and the other concerning a rolling and long-running public debate over Cannon’s handling of the case.
It’s not clear whether the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals will weigh in before the November election, but if they do not, and if Trump is reelected, Cannon’s decision could very well be the last word on the matter in this case. Trump, of course, is widely expected to ensure that the Justice Department’s cases against him are dismissed if he returns to office.
On top of that, Cannon’s decision could give Trump even more ammunition in the prosecutorial revenge campaign that he has repeatedly promised to embark upon against his supposed political enemies and legal adversaries. That’s because Cannon effectively concluded that the Justice Department is legally barred from appointing special counsels from outside the department — even in cases where there is an obvious conflict of interest for the current administration.
Cannon’s 93-page opinion, by itself, does not bind any other judge in the country, but you can reasonably expect a future Trump Justice Department to use Cannon’s opinion to justify any decision to use Trump appointees at DOJ to directly manage any investigations and prosecutions of his purported enemies and critics.
For almost two years now, legal analysts and political commentators who have taken issue with Cannon’s handling of the case have grappled with two different characterizations of the judge, who was appointed by Trump and has proven to be a highly favorable draw for him. Is Cannon a “MAGA judge in the tank for Trump” who was always looking for a superficially plausible reason to toss the case against him? Or is she a relatively conventional conservative judge — another card-carrying member of the Federalist Society — who is inexperienced and in over her head?
The debate has played out in countless cable television segments, news stories and social media posts. As a participant in many of those discussions, I have largely tended toward the latter characterization of Cannon, whose handling of the case — both procedurally and substantively — seemed consistent with that of an ideologically-driven judge who lacks significant experience dealing with complex litigation.
Her decision on Monday, however, is potent evidence in favor of her strongest detractors.
WHAT'D I MISS?
— Menendez found guilty in corruption trial: Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez was found guilty today in his corruption trial, a historic verdict marking a dramatic downfall for New Jersey’s senior senator who was one of the most influential people in Washington D.C. The 12-member jury found Menendez guilty on all 16 counts after a two-month trial on charges that all but ended his political career. Federal prosecutors accused Menendez of bribery, acting as a foreign agent for Egypt, obstruction of justice, extortion and conspiring to commit those crimes.
— House GOP ramps up investigations into Trump assassination attempt: House Republicans are quickly ramping up their sprawling investigation into the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump — with a GOP chair scheduling a public hearing with a trio of top officials next week. House Homeland Security Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) today invited Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray to testify about Saturday’s shooting before his panel on July 23. Cheatle is already expected to appear before the House Oversight Committee the day before, and Wray is slated to testify before the House Judiciary Committee next week, an appearance that was on the books before Saturday’s shooting.
— Scarborough blasts NBC for pulling ‘Morning Joe’ after Trump shooting, threatens to quit if it happens again: MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough slammed his own network for pulling his show on Monday in favor of news coverage of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, saying he and co-host Mika Brzezinski were “surprised” and “disappointed” by the call and threatening to leave if it happens again. “Next time we are told there will be a news feed replacing us, we will be in our chairs,” Scarborough said live on air this morning. “And the news feed will be us, or they can get somebody else to host the show.”
NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024
DELAY TACTICS — Dozens of House Democrats are organizing a plan to speak out against their own party’s effort to seal President Joe Biden’s nomination sooner than originally planned, which they argue stifles the intense ongoing debate about his candidacy, according to a lawmaker involved in the effort.
A drafted letter, circulated by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and obtained by POLITICO, offers the first public signal from Democrats since the weekend’s attempted assassination on former President Donald Trump that scores of their own members remain deeply unsettled about the future of Biden’s candidacy.
HOLD OUT — Teamsters President Sean O’Brien called President Joe Biden “definitely the most pro-labor president we’ve ever had and we’ve ever seen” — but he’s still not ready to endorse him. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters president, who represents over 1.3 million members, became the first Teamsters leader to speak at a Republican National Convention on Monday evening. The union has historically endorsed Democratic candidates — but this year, O’Brien suggested, that could change.
PELOSI IN PRIVATE — One House Democrat anxious about President Joe Biden’s effect on the 2024 campaign recently sought out guidance from a trusted party leader: Nancy Pelosi. This lawmaker, who represents a swing seat and was granted anonymity to describe private conversations, said Pelosi asked detailed questions about congressional district-level polling and was “very receptive” to concerns that Biden couldn’t win in November. The member ended the phone call with the distinct impression that Pelosi believed Biden should exit the presidential race.
AROUND THE WORLD
IN THE IN BETWEEN — Governing France is about to get much harder for Emmanuel Macron. The French president today accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and his government, the Elysée said in a statement, officially starting a transition period during which the outgoing administration plays the role of caretaker government until a new executive is appointed.
The statement added that Macron urged “all Republican forces” to reach an agreement in order to end this transition period “as soon as possible.”
This transitory period has never lasted more than nine days — but these are unprecedented times in France.
The choice of who fills the prime ministerial and cabinet positions is up to the president, who mostly does as they please when their party holds an absolute majority in parliament, or otherwise picks the leader of whichever party controls the lower house.
But the fragmented political landscape in France makes it unclear who is set to govern and who will act as an opposition.
Though the left-wing New Popular Front coalition won last week’s snap election, it is far from holding an absolute majority in the National Assembly and cracks are starting to appear in its ranks over who should be put forward as prime minister.
NIGHTLY NUMBER
RADAR SWEEP
NEED A FRIEND — When writer Kelly Stout had a child and entered her thirties, she noticed that it was harder to spontaneously see many of her friends. They had moved away, or they were busy themselves with children or partners or work. So she gave herself one month to make a new friend, someone who she could text and see on a whim and whose company she enjoyed. For Esquire, she wrote about the trials and tribulations of that process — why more Americans are wanting for friends than ever, why it’s hard to make new ones and some of the benefits of doing so.
PARTING IMAGE
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