Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance shakes hands with former President Donald Trump during a rally at Herb Brooks National Hockey Center in St Cloud, Minn., on July 27.Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
Ever since Donald Trump arrived on the American political scene, in all his venomous ignorance, it has been the pastime among normies to scare themselves silly with the following speculative question: What would happen if a smarter, more strategic Trump came along?
The premise was that Mr. Trump is too lazy, stupid and unhinged to pull off an actual, honest-to-God coup. He would certainly want to and would probably try, as indeed he eventually did. And, as he was also to prove, he was capable of causing a lot of harm even short of seizing absolute power.
But as far as potential Caesars were concerned, it was the next one, the one after Mr. Trump, his more intelligent successor – that was the one to fear.
Well, now we need no longer speculate. A smarter Trump has come along, and his name is J.D. Vance. To be sure, others have contended for the title – Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Marco Rubio – but none before has had the mantle bestowed upon him by His Donaldness himself. In selecting Mr. Vance as his vice-presidential candidate, Mr. Trump was plainly signalling his vision of the future of MAGA.
And what has happened has been … a spectacular fizzle. From the night of his nomination, the wooden Mr. Vance has bored and confused audiences wherever he has gone. His litany of past musings – denouncing “childless cat ladies,” boasting of how little he cared what happened to Ukraine, urging Mr. Trump to defy the Supreme Court – have alienated not only liberals and Democrats, but many Republicans. Polls confirm he is the least popular vice-presidential candidate since Sarah Palin.
Sensing weakness, political and media opponents have descended on him, savaging him mercilessly. It is not only Mr. Vance who has suffered as a result. In tandem with the sudden elevation of Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, the effect has been to kill whatever bump in the polls Mr. Trump might have expected from the Republican convention, or from the attempt on his life.
Far from Mr. Trump’s heir apparent, the man who would cement his hold on the party – and the presidency – Mr. Vance is now regarded as a serious political liability, if not Mr. Trump’s Achilles’ heel.
What happened? Some have attributed Mr. Vance’s apparent failure to his repellent personality, a kind of bookish smarm, equal parts dour and oily: he lacks, it is said, Mr. Trump’s offensive brio, his joie de grift.
Part of it may also be explained by the fact that he is the new kid in school. As such he was probably doomed to be Mr. Trump’s proxy, absorbing all the blows people had given up directing at Mr. Trump.
But I think the larger part is precisely that Mr. Vance is “the smarter Mr. Trump.” By now we should have learned that Mr. Trump’s profound ignorance – a vast mental wasteland of incuriousness, guarded by stupidity – is, like his bottomless vulgarity, his unalloyed corruption, and his refusal to abide by any convention of civilized conduct, his superpower.
It makes him invulnerable to criticism. What is the point? Mr. Trump is incapable of shame. He does not care if people think he is dumb, any more than he cares if they think he is a crook. Rather, through the sheer volume of his sins, lies and cockups, he has forced his critics to lower their standards, out of sheer exhaustion.
The smart guy, on the other hand, is automatically held to a different standard. For the smart guy typically wants people to know he is smart. At the very least, he will do nothing to conceal it – a critical failing in politics, where it is best to be underestimated.
To be the smartest guy in the room is often – not always, but often – to lack a certain humility, a key ingredient of good judgment. But it also sets him up as a target. Mr. Trump says a dozen things a day that are as bad or worse than Mr. Vance’s worst clangers. But people expect more of Mr. Vance.
A smart guy, moreover, typically holds certain beliefs, at least for a time. Mr. Vance is excoriated for having exchanged the mainstream conservatism of his youth for the MAGA extremism he now finds it convenient to spout. Mr. Trump, by contrast, has no known beliefs – or rather he believes anything and everything, depending on whom he last spoke to. He has been known to change his position on an issue several times in the same sentence.
This sort of mental incontinence would be abhorrent to an intellectual like Mr. Vance, who prefers to betray his ideals in a way that is more measured and considered, not random and uncontrolled. For where Mr. Vance is a mere calculating opportunist, Mr. Trump is a talented, instinctive nihilist. That may be the most important difference between them.