JD Vance just can’t help himself

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the Republican vice-presidential candidate, speaks in Boston on Aug. 29. (Josh Reynolds/AP)

We probably can agree that this hasn’t been a banner year for vice-presidential candidates.

Democrat Tim Walz is a high school football coach and teacher who became a governor but, as he has said, uses poor grammar — if, in some people’s view, charmingly. Republican JD Vance is a wickedly smart Yale Law School graduate and celebrated author who speaks cogently but lacks charm. And manners, to put it charitably.

Having already taken a close look at Walz, I turn now to Vance, though I’ll have to type fast to stay ahead of his stream of foot-in-mouth eruptions. Help me here, psychoanalysts: What kind of person, other than Donald Trump, says aloud whatever cheap shot pops into their brain without any attempt to self-edit? Let me guess: a jerk.

Vance is everything Trump is but maybe worse because he knows better (I think), yet tells Trump challenger Vice President Kamala Harris to “go to hell.” What?!

“He’s unformed,” a friend who knows him well tells me. I can accept that he’s politically immature, but there’s no excuse for his consistent resort to insult. Vance loves unforced errors more than tennis superstar Carlos Alcaraz, who chalked up 27 of them in his losing match against Botic van de Zandschulp at the U.S. Open last week.

Vance’s explosive rebuke of “childless cat ladies,” a viral comment that was catnip to his critics, has been adequately dissected. In sum, his remark was interpreted not as an intended “joke” but as an insult to infertile women. His explanation proved worse: He meant to say only that people who choose not to have children are suspect and deserving of disdain. He railed specifically against Harris, who has two stepchildren; Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is married and is father to adopted twins; and Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, neither of whom is married.

What a silver-tongued devil, that one!

There’s plenty to say about people’s decreasing interest in having children these days and the economic consequences of a declining birth rate. But I’m pretty sure Vance merely wanted to prove that he’s as much a jerk as Trump, the man he rather suddenly reveres. In this, he succeeded.

For years a “never Trumper” who referred to the former president as an “idiot” and “America’s Hitler,” Vance has stumped former fans with his turnaround. How could this fellow be the same person who wrote the standout memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which I read and loved? How can someone who seems so good turn out to be so NOT?

Clearly, being a wonderful writer doesn’t make one a wonderful person (though your prayers are welcome). Libraries are filled with great books by not-such-great people. There’s reason to wonder whether Trumpism isn’t a contagion like covid-19. Maybe proximity to the former reality-show celebrity causes one to become a self-centered, boastful oaf. Take a look at the people around Trump and you’ll not discover a confederacy of saints.

Back when he was on his 2016 book tour, Vance was feted by people on the left as a seer whose insights explained Trump’s working-class fan base and his election to the presidency. Today, he is Trump’s alter ego, sherpa and wolverine, joining in conspiracy theories and nitwit ideas that make one wonder whether “Suits” genius Mike Ross took his LSATs and bar exam for him.

He has advanced the preposterous conspiracy theory that President Joe Biden is allowing fentanyl to cross our southern border to kill MAGA voters. In a video posted on X, Vance says: “If you wanted to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland, how better to target them and their kids with this deadly fentanyl. … It does look intentional. It’s like Joe Biden wants to punish the people who didn’t vote for him.”

Whaaat? Is anyone out there nodding in agreement with this nonsense? Vance also has implied that Biden supports Ukraine against Russia because Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t support transgender rights. As if to leave no demographic un-insulted, he took Biden to task for declaring Indigenous Peoples’ Day to replace Columbus Day.

Pick your battles, son. I can only surmise from these examples and too many more to mention that Vance has lost his mind. Either that or he thinks Trump voters are so stupid they’ll embrace any tripe he delivers as long as it tickles their id. Just keep them doggies rollin’. I have more respect for the people Vance described in his book — his own kinfolk — than he does.

Thus, it seems, we’ve been offered two vice-presidential candidates who inspire little confidence in their ability to fill the president’s seat should circumstances require. We’re left with a grudging hope that the presidential victor doesn’t leave office before his or her term expires.

Whatever happens in November and January will be the start of a very long four years.