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More about J.D. Vance

 


This is not a day-to-day politics blog. Even in the midst of the final stretch of a Presidential campaign, that is NOT what this is, as my readers have surely noticed. I will not, for example, be reviewing this week's debate here. 

Nor is it a personal commentary on J.D. Vance, the VP nominee on the Republican side. 

But Vance does seem likely to eclipse even Sarah Palin in the annals of unforgotten unforgiven running mate choices.

Not long ago a reporter for a local television station, (a Fox station, if it matters) asked Vance the following simple question. It was phrased as two questions, but we may treat it as one, "What makes you smile? what makes you happy?" 

This is known as a softball. Nobody gets the Pulitzer for them, but they aren't "bogus," either. They are generally an opening for a candidate to get an uncomplicated message out. If someone asks a politician, "what makes you smile?" -- what is a non-JD answer? A normal US politician, back when we had them, might have said, "this great country, liberty, fireworks, full employment, stable prices all make me smile. Thanks for asking." That would work.

Or maybe, "time with my wife and kids makes me smile, as does time with old friends, but I am willing to sacrifice those smiles for the good of the country by immersing myself in this campaign." That would be a good answer.

It is difficult to think of a worse answer than the one Vance gave. "I smile at a lot of things including bogus questions from the media, man."

Part of what makes it so awful is the strained sense of victimhood. Vance wants to see himself as the victim even when he is being served up an open-ended question of the sort he might more plausibly complain of NOT being asked once in a while. He is obviously nobody's victim at this moment, yet he has to see himself as such, so he has to see this question as "bogus".

But another part of what makes this answer so odd is that final word, "man." It sounds like Vance decided while giving the absurdly angry aggrieved answer that he was sounding like a jerk, and it would be better to sound like he was making a joke about being a jerk. Hence the casualness of that final word, man.

Nobody has found it funny. Making one's self a pathetic spectacle is not a joke. And a proclivity to do so is, to put the matter gently, an inadequate recommendation for public office.

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