JD Vance: A Return to Republican Normalcy?
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Recent presidential debates have departed from tradition, to say the least. Ill-tempered, ill-mannered, these spectacles have often degenerated into, at best, character assassinations and, at worst, promises to lock up the opponent on stage. If it takes two to tango, then Republicans have certainly been leading the dance in recent years.
One need not look much further than the Trump-Harris debate last month. Restrained in comparison to previous debates, former-President Trump focused more so on policy than he did on the Vice-President’s personality, with a flourish of hyperbole that is his calling card. Disparaging Harris as a Marxist, and accusing the Democrats of allowing abortion after the ninth month – otherwise known as infanticide – Trump made outlandish claims that make the good-natured ripostes between rival candidates as recent as Obama-Romney in 2012 feel like a distant memory. The now infamous line ‘they’re eating the pets’ will be one for the history books.
This is to say nothing of the Republican debates for this year’s presidential nominee in which candidates, who were realistically only ever playing second fiddle to Trump, engaged in one rancorous debate after another. Meanwhile, the former president was able to relax and enjoy warm, soft-ball interviews with acolytes like conspiracy-enthusiast Tucker Carlson.
On the back of these examples, one would be forgiven for apprehension ahead of the vice-presidential debate between Ohio Senator JD Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Yet what graced screens was a decorum not often seen since Vance’s running mate entered the political stage nine years ago. The candidates, both Midwesterners and veterans, expounded a common vision for the United States: one of affordable housing, energy security, and safety from gun violence in schools. How the two candidates saw the path to doing this, and how each interpreted what the last eight years had wrought, however, differed considerably. During the debate, Vance, who had previously called Walz ‘shameful’ and ‘dishonest’ in relation to his military service, sensibly avoided all personal attacks on the Governor and instead stuck to policy disagreements between the two.
However, the fact that Vance's performance was viewed with such relief and praise is arguably an indictment of where political discourse is in the US. Whilst he had policy ideas that appeared cogent and reasonably argued, he still doubled down on claims of abortion after birth (again, murder) and equated political pressure being levied on Facebook with President Trump’s ‘peaceful’ protest of the election results which led to an attack on the Capitol.
It is interesting to ponder, then, whether it is better to have rhetoric like this packaged in such elegant and sagacious language, or whether this merely legitimises falsehoods and bad policy. In the past, conservative ideologues have used such language, particularly when rallying against progressive legislation anathema to their sensibilities.
Since the end of the 1960s, it has primarily been skilled rhetoricians in the GOP who have pushed envelopes of this nature. While it may be argued that the election of Trump in 2016 and his subsequent staying power in politics proves that voters do not care how these ideas are presented, he may be the exception that proves the rule. For when we see other Republicans like Vivek Ramaswamy make similar outlandish remarks to those of the former President, they rarely generate widespread support outside the MAGA base.
Even in the unlikely event that Vance does represent a departure from recent political turmoil in the Republican Party, a return to normalcy – one in which civility masks cynicism – may not be as laudable as it first appears.