What do the Vice Presidential candidates say about the US election campaigns?
Dr Adam Quinn explains why JD Vance and Tim Walz have been picked for VP by Trump and Harris, and what this says about how the camps are feeling about the race.
Dr Adam Quinn explains why JD Vance and Tim Walz have been picked for VP by Trump and Harris, and what this says about how the camps are feeling about the race.
Both the vice-presidential picks in this election cycle have reflected, in their own ways, optimism on the part of the campaigns doing the picking. Time will tell who was right to feel that way.
In selecting JD Vance, a 39-year-old elected to his first office in 2022 as junior US Senator from Ohio, Trump chose a partner for his ticket who is young, inexperienced, intellectual, ideologically sharp-edged, and highly embedded in the power structure of the Trumpist right.
Vance brings little by way of independent contribution to the ticket’s electoral hopes. He underperformed relative to what one would expect of a Republican in his election in Ohio, a state Trump is in any case almost certain to carry regardless. Although he wrote a celebrated book, Hillbilly Elegy, about the hard lives and cultural pathologies of the white working class in the Midwest and South from which his family originated, his subsequent life and career do not lend themselves to easily to landing an ‘identity politics’ pitch to those people. His time at Yale Law School followed by the venture capital world around Silicon Valley certainly laid the foundations for a political career, but they also severely complicate any effort to present him now as an even half-authentic voice for the middle-American everyman. In adulthood, he has spent more time connecting with tech billionaires (to secure wealth and patronage), culture journalists (to promote his book), and latterly culture warriors of the online right (to carve out a base in the Republican Party) than the median voter.
It is true that Vance has advocated more for the defence of American industry against foreign competition, expressed more concern for the economic interests of Americans lower down the class scale, and been readier to attack large corporations, than has been usual for Republicans in recent years. But it is entirely unclear if this is tethered to a concrete policy programme that would meaningfully advance those ends or just rhetorical positioning without real substance. There is more reason to suppose he means business when it comes to socially conservative positions on abortion, gay rights, gender, divorce, and other issues since Republicans would be more united in pursuing that agenda. The recent backlash against his trollish statement on Fox News in 2021 that America is run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and…want to make the rest of the country miserable too”, is just the tip of the substantial iceberg, as he has spent years speaking freely on this and other themes in media forums that do not incentivise moderation.
The main upsides for Trump in a Vance pick lie on the other side of the election. For one thing, he is completely subservient to Trump and will do what he is told. If a moment like the attempted hijacking of the presidential election result certification on Jan 6th, 2021, arises again, Vance will be prepared to act outside the bounds of the Constitution in a way then VP Mike Pence ultimately was not. Secondarily, Vance is more eager than the alternatives would have been to secure the place of ‘Trumpism’ as the dominant ethos of the Republican Party whenever Trump himself has left the scene. In short, Vance was a pick intended to reliably shore up Trump in office, and his legacy and power base if and when he exits it.
That being said, when Trump was sold on the Vance pick by advisers, he will have expected him to be a figure who provokes controversy, but not to become a figure of ridicule. His launch onto the larger stage has not gone terribly well, and it was almost immediately reported that Trump had buyer’s remorse at his selection. It is telling that when asked publicly about his choice, Trump’s first response was not an uncompromising defence of Vance’s strengths but to play down whether a VP choice mattered much at all. Already, it seems, doubt has seeped in deep on the question of whether he is an asset or a liability to the campaign.
Vice-presidential candidates are never, in themselves, the biggest factor in presidential elections. In the best-case scenario, they may add a small amount to the ticket’s margin in states to which they have a connection. But they can damage a campaign ...
On the Democratic side, Tim Walz is a very different proposition. He is 60 years old, with long service behind him as first a US Congressman, then a successful governor of the Minnesota. Before that he worked for 20 years as a high school teacher. Uncommonly for a top-tier American politician in the modern era, he neither studied at an elite university nor – even rarer – qualified as a lawyer. Over the arc of his career, he might best be characterized as a mainstream centre-left Democrat, with a populist streak and affect. In Congress, representing a rural district that would have more naturally tilted Republican, his record was quite moderate. As a governor, with a Democratic majority to work with in the state legislature, he has assembled a strong record of progressive measures in a range of policy areas.
Unlike Vance, who has proven a rather stilted and uninspiring speaker on the big stage, Walz has shown himself to be a talented communicator both on the stump and on television, where he effectively talked his way onto the VP shortlist via a torrent of strong appearances over the last fortnight. He has a flair for conveying the stakes of political contest in plain language, and made his first impact on campaign messaging before even being elevated to the VP slot, when he coined “weird” as the best word to characterize Trump, Vance, and their most ardent backers. This was picked up as a theme by Democrats across the board. A uniform theme in the testimony of those who have known Walz in the past, or deal with him now, is that he is almost preternaturally likeable and uplifting to be around. The Harris campaign will hope the wider electorate feels similarly, and that perhaps some of the good vibes rub off on the presidential candidate too.
This combination of record and personal qualities made Walz a widely-supported pick across all factions of the party, in contrast to the Vance pick, which represented victory for a quite particular set of forces within his party. The strongest alternative in contention for Harris’s nod was Josh Shapiro, the popular governor of Pennsylvania, a key swing state. With his own presidential ambitions obvious, fending off some scandals in his state, and not favoured by the party’s progressive wing, Shapiro might have been a more difficult cohabitant of the campaign bus and White House. But he would have been the more ruthlessly instrumental choice if considering electoral college votes alone. The fact that Harris chose Walz instead suggests the campaign team’s polling and judgement told them they could win the election without compromising on who they actually liked best for the job. In this way, the Walz pick, like the Vance one, reflects confidence, even if Walz seems likely to be a greater asset to the campaigning phase.
Vice-presidential candidates are never, in themselves, the biggest factor in presidential elections. In the best-case scenario, they may add a small amount to the ticket’s margin in states to which they have a connection. But they can damage a campaign somewhat if they distract from its preferred themes by saying ill-advised things, or reflect badly on the candidate’s judgement by coming across as unprepared or unfit for the presidency. In that sense, the first rule of making a vice-presidential pick is ‘do no harm’. Early indications put a big question mark over whether the Vance pick cleared this threshold. Walz looks at first blush like a more robust choice. But there is no substitute for the test of being in the arena, and we will know more soon.