J.D. Vance’s Strange Turn to 1876

June 25, 2024  |  800 words  |  Politics, Philosophy  

The critics’ ‘book’ on J.D. Vance is now set:  He is an unprincipled climber willing to say anything to get ahead.  The tar and feathering of Mr. Vance is largely the result of his strange about-face on Donald Trump: from calling him “America’s Hitler” back when no one was taking his political aspirations seriously, to defending Mr. Trump’s curious conduct after the 2020 election.

The June 13 interview Vance did with Ross Douthat in The New York Times referenced this defense in some detail, and various commentators were quick to pounce, citing it as fresh evidence that J.D. Vance is nothing more than a cynical pseudo-populist, an amoral sycophant, and an authoritarian weirdo.       

Unlike those critics, though, I think it is possible to find Mr. Vance’s defense of Trump’s conduct after the 2020 election to be “fundamentally unsupported and unpersuasive,” as his old friend Ross Douthat put it, without dismissing everything else J.D. Vance has to say as a newly-minted member of the U.S. Senate.

Writing in The New Times two days after the interview was published, Opinion Columnist Jamelle Boule manages to do just that – find fault with Mr. Vance’s perspective on the controversy over the 2020 election results, without descending into complete character assassination.  

Columnist Boule starts his piece by reminding us what Vance told Douthat in the June 13 interview:  Donald Trump’s effort to “Stop the Steal” was an attempt to deal with real discrepancies in the 2020 presidential race, and satisfy those voters angry about the conduct of the election.  In defending the former president and his allies, Vance took issue with the “political class” for taking this “very legitimate grievance over our most fundamental democratic act as a people, and completely suppressing concerns about it.”

But unlike the angry mob of Trump/Vance detractors, Jamelle Boule does not indulge in a broad, sweeping condemnation of J.D. Vance’s motives.  Instead, he drills down on a basic flaw in Vance’s logic, and provides the novice politician – and all of us – with a valuable history lesson.

As Mr. Boule reminds us, in the July 13 interview with Ross Douthat, “Vance briefly analogized Trump’s attempt to contest the election to that of the disputed election of 1876, describing the latter as an example of what should have been done in 2020.” 

Boule then spends four paragraphs detailing exactly what went down after the 1876 presidential election between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford Hayes.  He concludes by telling his readers: 

“The crisis of 1876 is one of the most interesting – and frankly convoluted – episodes in American political  history.  But it is strange for Senator Vance to cite it as an example of what should have been done in 2020.  The big and most important difference is that there was actual fraud and violence and intimidation in the 1876 presidential cycle.”

“… If Trump voters had been attacked, intimidated, and defrauded, then there might be reason to make the comparison with 1876 and demand serious investigation into the integrity of the vote.  But as we know from actual litigation carried out over two months, there was no fraud to speak of.  The 2020 presidential election was arguably the most secure – and among the most scrutinized – in American history.”

“What Vance calls the ‘legitimate grievances’ of the Jan 6 rioters were actually sour grapes.  They lost, they did not like it, and they were determined to change the outcome by any means necessary.  There is no reason any of us should respect their tantrum.”

Notice how Jamelle Boule respectfully refutes J.D. Vance argument on this one specific point without having to paint him as a cynical pseudo-populist, an amoral sycophant, or authoritarian weirdo.

Thank you, Mr. Boule, for providing us all with a valuable lesson in our nation’s contentious presidential election history.  And I am hopeful no one will appreciate this information more than J.D. Vance, because he strikes me as a principled young man who has only recently chosen public service as a career, and is still getting his feet under him, so to speak.  

On a more broadly philosophical note, I think people should be allowed to work things out and get better as they go, even if that means they take the occasional questionable stand along the way, due to a lack of knowledge or limited understanding.  This holds double for anyone in public life, in my opinion, since their ‘working out’ process happens on a much larger stage.  

None of us is a finished product, after all.  The key is being prepared to recalibrate a position once additional information comes to light.  Growing up I was taught it is good to openly admit mistakes with a measure of humility, and then most importantly of all, make a concerted effort to learn from them.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

www.robertjcavanaughjr.com

bobcavjr@gmail.com

What J.D. Vance Believes

June 17, 2024  |  1,982 words  |  Politics, Philosophy  

You may recognize this as the title of a recent interview Ross Douthat published on June 13 in The New York Times, conducted with the first-term Senator from Ohio and best-selling author of Hillbilly Elegy.  Then again, you may not.

I always try to read whatever Mr. Douthat writes, even if some of his in-depth analyses is occasionally above my pay grade.  And I was taken with Hillbilly Elegy when it came out in 2016 but have not paid attention to Mr. Vance’s journey since then, other than to wonder from afar about his dramatic change of heart, going from calling Donald Trump “America’s Hitler” to his recent championing of that boisterous and unhinged politician.

Douthat and Vance are roughly the same age and have known each other since before Mr. Vance made that big splash in 2016.  In fact, I just saw the two described as “old friends.”  I think that level of comfort and familiarity shows in the exchange that has been recorded and published.

You can find the interview at www.rossdouthat.com.  Just to whet your appetite I will quote from the introduction:

“The Vance of eight years ago was read with appreciation and gratitude by Trump opponents looking for a window into populism.  The Vance of today is despised and feared by many of the same kind of people.  His transformation is one of the most striking political stories of the Trump era, and one that’s likely to influence Republican politics even after Trump is gone.”

Reading this longish piece left me with a favorable impression of J.D. Vance.  Not because I agree with everything he had to say on a wide range of subjects, because I do not.  But he strikes me as a young man of integrity who has the common good as his motivating principle.  In other words, after reading this interview Mr. Vance appears to be more than just another blowhard politician shooting his mouth off trying to rile up the base in a blind grab for power.  

But judging by the reaction this interview generated, not everyone agrees with me.  The very next day (June 14) Jonathan Chait writing for New York magazine started his comments off with this:

Few political phenomena are more overdetermined than J.D. Vance’s endorsement of Donald Trump’s coup attempt.  Vance has carried off a cynical but highly successful mid-career switch from venture capitalist to professional pseudo-populist that requires catering to the beliefs of his constituency; he has fallen in with far-right authoritarian intellectuals who long for the destruction of the republic; and he is angling for a spot on Trump’s ticket.”

But was Vance “endorsing” the coup attempt in the interview?  Douthat describes Mr. Vance’s remarks on this subject as a “combative (and to my mind, fundamentally unsupported and unpersuasive) defense of Trump’s conduct after the 2020 election.”     

Andrew Sullivan on his The Weekly Dish blog focuses on this same aspect of the interview – the Jan 6 coup attempt – saying:

“Excusing political violence, supporting a deranged fantasist, and delegitimizing free and fair elections is the price he (Vance) is prepared to pay for power.”

I agree with Ross Douthat that J.D. Vance is not persuasive in his defense of Donald Trump’s conduct after the 2020 election.  But unlike Jonathan Chait and Andrew Sullivan, I do not think Vance is being cynical or calculated about it.

It is worth noting the “2020 election and Jan 6” was the fourth of four interview topics that Mr. Douthat queried Mr. Vance on.  There was a whole lot of back-and-forth before the two got to that particular fork in the road.

Indeed, even Andrew Sillivan begins his June 14 response to the interview by acknowledging:

“In Ross Douthat’s engrossing sit-down with his old friend and now Senator J.D. Vance, there is, to begin with, a nuanced discussion of how Trump has upended American politics toward the populist right, which Vance supports for a variety of decent (and, to my mind, largely persuasive) reasons.”

Allow me to quote from this beginning part of the longish interview…  

One:  After ‘Hillbilly Elegy’

Douthat:  So I thought it would be interesting for you to imagine yourself talking to a big “Hillbilly Elegy” fan from 2016, and talk him through how your perspective has changed.

Vance:  Let me give you one story: In 2018, I was invited to an event hosted by the Business Roundtable, an organization of C.E.O.s.  I was seated next to the C.E.O. of one of the largest hotel chains in the world at dinner.  He was almost a caricature of a business executive, complaining about how he was forced to pay his workers higher wages.

He said: “The labor market is super tight.  What Trump has done at the border has completely forced me to change the way I interact with my employees.”  And then he pivoted to me: “Well, you understand this as well as anybody.  These people just need to get off their asses, come to work and do their job.  And now, because we can’t hire immigrants, or as many immigrants, we’ve got to hire these people at higher wages.”

The fact that this guy saw me as sympathetic to his problem, and not the problem of the workers, made me realize that I’m on a train that has its own momentum and I have to get off this train, or I’m going to wake up in 10 years and really hate everything that I’ve become.  And so I decided to get off that train, and I felt like the only way that I could do that was, in some ways, alienating and offending people who liked my book.

Douthat:  Did your perspective on, let’s say, elite liberals change more in that time, or did your perspective on anti-Trump, business-class Republicans change more?

Vance:  Oh, both.  I think it’s very hard to say which group of people I felt more strongly about.  I literally grew up in a family where my grandmother was negotiating with the Meals on Wheels person to give her more food so that both of us could have something to eat.  And I was (then finding myself) going to the Sun Valley billionaires boot camp.  My life had completely transformed.

The people on the left, I would say, whose politics I am open to  – it’s the Bernie Bros.  But generally, center-left liberals who are doing very well, and center-right conservatives who are doing very well, have an incredible blind spot about how much their success is built on a system that is not serving people who they should be serving.

Douthat:  So you reach a point where you feel like you don’t want to be on the same side as, let’s says, the non-Sanders voting fans of you book.  How do you go from there to being actively pro-Trump?

Vance:  I was confronted with the reality that part of the reason the anti-Trump conservatives hated Trump was that he represented a threat to a way of doing things in this country that has been very good for them.

Douthat:  Is there anything you’ve said that you regret, in the course (of the last 8 years)?

Vance:  There are a ton of things I can point to where I can say, “I wish I struck this balance (between offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration, while also being sensitive and socially aware) a little bit differently.”  

Two:  Can Economic Populism Work?

Douthat: Do you think, generally, that there is a comprehensive populist economic agenda?

Vance:  Well, I have one.  The main thrust of the post-war American order of globalization has involved relying more on more on cheaper labor.  The trade issue and the immigration issue are two sides of the same coin:  The trade issue is cheaper labor overseas; the immigration issue is cheaper labor at home, which applies upward pressure on a whole host of services, from hospital services to housing and so forth.

The populist vision, at least as it exists in my head, is an inversion of that: applying as much upward pressure on wages and as much downward pressure on the services that people use as possible.  We’ve had far too little innovation over the last 40 years, and far too much labor substitution.  This is why I think the economics profession is fundamentally wrong about both immigration and about tariffs.  Yes, tariffs can apply upward pricing pressure on various things though I think it’s massively overstated – but when you are forced to do more with your domestic labor force, you have all of these positive dynamic effects.

It’s a classic formulation:  You raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour, and you will sometimes hear libertarians say this a is a bad thing.  “Well, isn’t McDonald’s just going to replace some of the workers with kiosks?”  That’s a good thing, because then the workers who are still there are going to make higher wages; the kiosks will perform useful function; and that’s the kind of rising tide that actually lifts all boats.  What is not good is you replace the McDonald’s worker from Middletown, Ohio, who makes $17 and hour with an immigrant who makes $15 an hour.  And that is, I think, the main thrust of elite liberalism, whether people acknowledge it or not.

*

There is much more to this exchange between Douthat and Vance, and I encourage you to find it and read it in its entirety.  Having done so myself, I cannot understand how Jonathan Chait of New York magazine can possibly justify describing J.D. Vance as a “pseudo-populist” who “has carried off a cynical but highly successful career switch from being a venture capitalist” who now merely “caters to the beliefs of his constituency.” Or how Andrew Sullivan of The Weekly Dish can suggest young Mr. Vance has abandoned logic in exchange for political power.

Why must we always demonize a political opponent?  Even a politician with whom we disagree most of the time is capable of a reasonable position now and then.  But it’s as if once we’ve condemned someone, we must maintain our resolve and continue to do so in every instance.  Another behavioral tick is how a political opponent can’t just be ‘wrong’ on a given issue, they also have to be a bad person.  

Why does our version of political theater insist we always turn people we disagree with into a nasty, sarcastic punch line?  

Mr. Vance comments on the nature of character assassination in politics in the first of half of the Douthat interview, when he says: “The thing I kept thinking about liberalism in 2019 and 2020 is that these guys have all read Carl Schmitt – there’s no law, there’s just power.  And the goal here is to get back in power.”

The rabid attacks that each side inflicts upon the other unfortunately seem to be focused on just that – vanquishing the enemy and retaining or getting back into power.  Instead of trying to parse out the best policy proscription, or on achieving a compromise most can live with. 

I find J.D. Vance to be a fascinating figure, for the very reason Andrew Sullivan mentions at the end of his piece.  Vance is in the process of “juggling the legitimate insights of Trumpism with the lying, livid lunacy of Trump himself…”  I will be watching to see how Vance navigates all this, moving forward.

Conclusion:  The people who loath the idea of a second Trump Presidency just scroll past what J.D. Vance has to say about economic populism, eviscerating him because of his support for Trump’s candidacy.  But Mr. Vance’s views on economics can form the basis of valid policy positions, with or without Trump.  And even after Trump is gone.  It doesn’t really matter who gets that flag to the top of the hill.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

www.robertjcavanaughjr.com

bobcavjr@gmail.com

Stephen Greenblatt’s Tyrant

June 6,  2024  |  1,091 words  |  Politics, Philosophy

Since no amount of scandal seems able to deter Donald Trump from recapturing the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in the upcoming Fall election, now might be a good time to look back and review one of the more unique analyses of his improbable first win in 2016.

World-renowned Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt was moved to publish Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics in 2018, as his way of processing a most unsettling election result.

By exploring the famous playwright’s portrayals of bad (and often mad) rulers, Mr. Greenblatt shows us just how contemporary the Bard’s insights can be.

I happened across this little book a few weeks ago and am only halfway through the slim volume.  So far, every page is a highlight, there is no filler.  Two of the plays Mr. Greenblatt uses in this first part of his book to draw inferences to our present-day political machinations are the not-often produced Henry VI, and the much better-known and frequently revived Richard III.

You need not be a Shakespeare aficionado, or even particularly familiar with either of these two plays, to find this book utterly fascinating.  All you need is an interest in learning a slightly different perspective on how we got to where we are, politically speaking.  And a wry sense of how there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to human nature.

As a side note, while I have always been fond of Shakespeare’s sonnets, I have also always found the plays, especially the historical dramas, a bit dense and hard to follow.  

If you are in that camp with me, there is no need to worry.  Stephen Greenblatt unpacks things nicely for the novice.  The short excerpts he quotes from each play help the general reader in two ways.  First, they highlight the inherent poetry in the writing, and make that poetry easier to discern in bite-size chunks.  And second, these excerpts drive home the comparisons being made between Shakespeare’s take on the royal court of 15th century England and our own time.

And of course, Mr. Greenblatt’s extensive commentary does a fine job of underscoring those comparisons as well.  As I say, every page is a highlight reel, but allow me to quote from the opening of his Chapter 5, entitled “Enablers”…

“Richard III’s villainy is readily apparent to almost everyone.  There is no deep secret about his cynicism, cruelty,  and treacherousness, no glimpse of anything redeemable in him, and no reason to believe that he could ever govern the country effectively.  The question the play explores, then, is how such a person actually attained the English throne.  The achievement, Shakespeare suggests, depended on a fatal conjunction of diverse but equally self-destructive responses from those around him.  Together these responses amount to a whole country’s collective failure…

“There are those who cannot keep in focus that Richard is as bad as he seems to be.  They know that he is a pathological liar and they see perfectly well that he has done this or that ghastly thing, but they have a strange penchant for forgetting, as if it were hard work to remember just how awful he is.  They are drawn irresistibly to normalize what is not normal…

“Another group is composed of those who do not quite forget that Richard is a miserable piece of work but who nonetheless trust that everything will continue in a normal way.

“They persuade themselves that there will always be enough adults in the room, as it were, to ensure that promises will be kept, alliances honored, and core institution respected.  Richard is so obviously and grotesquely unqualified for the supreme position of power that they dismiss him from their minds.

“Their focus is always on someone else, until it is too late.  They fail to realize quickly enough that what seemed impossible is actually happening.  They have relied on a structure that proves unexpectedly fragile.”

*

As the book’s jacket cover notes, Stephen Greenblatt’s Tyrant displays Shakespeare’s “uncanny relevance to the political world in which we now find ourselves.”  There are eerie temperamental and stylistic similarities between Richard III and Donald Trump, even though author Greenblatt never comes right out and mentions the latter by name.

That said, there are some important differences between these two big-time connivers we should also keep in mind.  

Richard was an ambitious young man who left a trail of dead bodies in the wake of his callous maneuvering, reigned over England only two years, and suffered an inglorious death on the battlefield at the tender age of 32.  Mr. Trump, of course, is a much older man who did not formally enter the political arena until his late sixties, is now going for a second four-year term in the White House, and as far as we know has not yet been responsible for any of his political adversaries meeting an untimely end.   

Though there are those who will tell you the form of free-market capitalism Donald Trump has practiced all his life is a lethal form of violence.

*

We the American electorate have certainly been given unappealing choices in previous presidential elections, but this year’s Biden-Trump rematch feels like one of the least appealing in recent memory.  At one point I was hopeful the upstart group ‘No Labels’ would assemble a viable ticket and gain enough ballot access across the country to make voting ‘third party’ a realistic option this time around.  Since that promise fizzled, we are left with the standard crop of marginal third party longshots who have zero chance of being elected.

In the opinion of many, including me, Mr. Biden should not be seeking re-election and should have instead focused his energy on identifying a worthy successor who would have allowed him to bow out graciously after a largely successful first term.

Then again, that a consummate political animal like Biden would not walk away from the world’s most prestigious job, the one he has spent his entire career in public life chasing, is maybe something we should have expected.  

Given the alternative, this voter will have no choice in November but to punch Joe’s ticket for a second term.  Even if at this stage of the game he obviously needs help getting up and down stairs, and is prone to slurring his words.

In the meantime, as we slog our way through the next five months of desultory campaign coverage, I will cheer myself by reading on.  I am looking forward to more of Stephen Greenblatt’s entertaining and enlightening insights into Shakespeare’s many other tyrants.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

www.robertjcavanaughjr.com

bobcavjr@gmail.com