Who will J.D. Vance become?

He could become anything.

Donald Trump has selected J.D. Vance to be his running mate. The mainstream media will focus on Vance’s statements from eight years ago attacking Trump in very harsh terms. I imagine it already doing this.

I want to focus on one of these statements. In 2016, Vance sent a message about Trump to a law school classmate. According to a screenshot the classmate shared on social media in 2022, Vance said he went “back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America’s Hitler.”

Trump is not, and was never going to be, “America’s Hitler.” It speaks quite poorly for Vance that he would harbor such a thought — one reserved for the fringiest never-and-anti Trumpers.

As for the first of Vance’s two alternatives, I think it accurately describes Vance himself. He strikes me as a deeply cynical figure like Nixon who wouldn’t (I’ll say “might not”) be that bad and might prove useful.

Vance’s cynicism seems obvious from the way, in a very short time, he went from saying Trump might be America’s Hitler to becoming one of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders. Vance explains this transformation with all the skill of a Yale-trained lawyer. Yet, it smacks of rank opportunism. In fact, it was only by becoming a Trump cheerleader that he won the nomination to be a Senator. Vance was trailing in the polls until Trump endorsed him.

But Vance might not be “that bad” and might even “prove useful.” No one can deny his first-rate intelligence. He also seems to possess a first-rate, well-rounded understanding of America in many of its aspects.

Vance demonstrated his understanding of rural and blue collar America in his celebrated book Hillbilly Elegy. And clearly, he understands the other side of tracks, thanks to his Yale education and his work with the nation’s elites.

In addition, Vance served in the military and in the Senate. A better-rounded candidate of any age — let alone one who is not quite 40-years-old — is hard to imagine. (Tom Cotton is comparably well-rounded and without the Nixon-like cynicism.)

American history is full of major figures who were one thing, then something else, and a third thing later on. Joe Biden is like that. So was Richard Nixon. If we go back much further in our history, we find such politicians in abundance.

A few weeks short of this 40th birthday, J.D. Vance has already been two things as a adult — never Trumper and Trump acolyte. It seems highly unlikely that he’s done becoming new things.

But because the two things he’s been so far are polar opposites of one an other, it’s impossible to say what new things Vance will become. Except that, one way or another, he’s likely to become part of Donald Trump’s legacy.