In his immoral absolutism, JD Vance outflanks even Donald Trump

Editorial: On everything from abortion rights to the future of Ukraine, the Republicans’ pick for vice-president could prove even more fundamentalist and isolationist than his boss

Vice-presidential pick JD Vance at the Republican convention (Reuters)

On the vice presidency of the United States of America, one of its incumbents, John Nance Garner, famously remarked, “isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit” – or at least that’s the bowdlerised version of an even earthier verdict. Serving with the restless activist president Franklin D Roosevelt in the 1930s, the somewhat overshadowed Vice President Garner didn’t have much to do – but that is not necessarily the case in the role.

The young, ambitious and extremely pragmatic JD Vance, Donald Trump’s pick for running mate in the November election, obviously thinks the job has great potential. A much younger man than many other vice presidents, at 39, Mr Vance could be forgiven for seeing the role as training for the highest office in due course, if not sooner.

The closest precedent would be Richard Nixon, who, in 1952, was nominated as vice-president for the Republicans at the age of 40, when his chief, Dwight Eisenhower, was over 60. Eventually, Mr Nixon succeeded to the presidency, as have so many other veeps – Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, Lyndon B Johnson, Gerald Ford, George HW Bush and, indeed, Joe Biden.

So what does Mr Vance want to do with the job? He is, by all accounts, a highly intelligent man, and unlikely to be satisfied with the purely ceremonial tasks associated with it. Vice-presidents can be given specific responsibilities – as with Al Gore on the environment, or Dick Cheney in foreign and defence matters. What doesn’t seem to be on the agenda, as yet, for either Mr Trump or Mr Vance is Mr Trump’s new plan to “bring the country together”. Less than a day after the former president, seemingly chastened by the attempt on his life, signalled his mission to unify his fractured nation, he chose just about the most divisive, rebarbative and downright extreme candidate he could find to do the job.

Mr Vance is bad news for America and worse news for the world. For example, he has indicated that, if required, he would do what then vice-president Mike Pence refused to do on January 6 2021, and obstruct the lawful and peaceful transfer of power to the new administration. Peering some way into the future, if, after the presidential election of 2028, candidate Vance was defeated by a Democrat, he’d find himself in a position where he could abuse his constitutional powers and, in effect, declare himself president.

Long before that, though, America would be lumbered with a slavishly loyal yes-man of a vice-president, with no more interest in building consensus and protecting the constitution than his boss. The most immediate danger is Mr Vance’s almost sadistic attitude to any woman seeking an abortion, again outflanking even Mr Trump in his immoral absolutism.

So far as the wider world is concerned, Mr Vance seems even more fundamentalist and isolationist than Mr Trump. Carelessly, or possibly not, he told the National Conservatism Conference last week that Britain is perhaps now the world’s first truly Islamist nation with nuclear weapons, “after Labour took over”.

More dangerously, Mr Vance is openly prepared to reward Vladimir Putin for his war of aggression against Ukraine, with huge tracts of this sovereign state to be ceded to Russia or some puppet statelets of the Kremlin. This, presumably, would be after Mr Trump had made the deal with Vladimir Putin, and presented it as a fait accompli to Volodymyr Zelensky. The echoes of the Munich Agreement of 1938 are as clear as they are chilling.

The only possible saving grace in the case of Mr Vance is that the opinions he holds at any given time seem to be entirely conditional on his own self-interest. After all, the man who he now claims to venerate he once derided as “America’s Hitler”: “Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this, I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.” It is possible that pressure of events, changed circumstances or, most likely, self-interest would cause Mr Vance to change his mind once more. But there are no guarantees.

God does, indeed, want better for America than what Mr Vance and Mr Trump seem set to be offering this November. With the current disarray in the Democratic Party, however, God and mankind will be disappointed once again, and the most sinister vice-president in American history, carrying a metaphorical bucket of warm bile, looks set to be sworn in next January.