First, let’s note that the selection of a vice presidential candidate that actually has a significant impact on a presidential election is rare.
The most solid evidence of this theory came in 1988, when Democratic vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen seemed far more qualified for the job of vice president (and president-elect) than Republican candidate Dan Quayle. Bentsen delivered the most decisive knockout of the television debate era: “I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was my friend. You’re no Jack Kennedy.”
To say that Quayle was poorly received by the public is an understatement, but that didn’t matter: voters were choosing between George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, not between Quayle and Bentsen, and Bush won in a landslide victory, even though Bentsen had higher approval ratings than Quayle.
The easiest way for many campaign strategists to judge a running mate comes down to two questions: Does he pass the “qualification” bar for enough voters to be president, and will it hurt his chances as a presidential candidate? That last question is the key.
For Mitt Romney in 2012, picking Paul Ryan made a lot of sense both culturally and for governing purposes, but it also allowed Democrats to tie Romney to Ryan’s Medicare reform plan, which became extraordinarily unpopular once Democratic ad makers had finished with it. Choosing Ryan probably didn’t cost Romney the election, but it certainly cost him valuable news cycles reacting to Ryan’s Medicare plan instead of applying more pressure on the Democratic candidate.
Fast forward to the present: Donald Trump’s shortlist also included Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, but Vance is the one with the most questionable credentials in the race, despite being the one who is most culturally aligned with Trump’s message.
Vance is perhaps the only true MAGA candidate of the three, emblematic of where Trump wants to take his party. Rubio and Burgum would have been just as (if not more) at home in the Romney-Bush era of the Republican Party as they were in this new populist-led era.
Don’t just take my word for it: Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee and Trump’s daughter-in-law, had this to say about Vance’s selection: “I think he’s the future of the party. He has the same values as my father-in-law, so I think a lot of people will be looking to him in the future. If you ask Donald Trump, that was a very important characteristic he was looking for in a running mate, and I think that’s what we got.”
But Vance, who was elected to the Senate in 2022 in his first bid for public office, is the least experienced and least vetted. Both Burgum and Rubio ran for president and faced public and private scrutiny of both their personal and professional lives throughout their campaigns. To be sure, Vance ran a difficult and high-profile Senate race in 2022, but the level of scrutiny is a world away from a presidential election.
Ask any of President Joe Biden’s campaign officials whom they would like Trump to pick and the answer would be unanimous: “We want Vance.” The Biden campaign is convinced that anything “MAGA” is unpopular with swing voters, and they believe the more they can associate Trump with the less popular parts of the MAGA agenda, the more likely they are to win.
While all three of Trump’s final contenders for the vice presidential spot were former critics (Rubio called Trump a con man, and Burgum told me he’d never do business with Trump), Vance’s critiques of Trump were some of the harshest in 2016. The Biden campaign is hoping to turn those moments into effective social media memes that can, at the very least, help rally Democratic supporters and raise money.
Biden’s campaign was privately relieved that Rubio wasn’t picked, as they had worried that he would have an advantage in campaigning more effectively with Latinos, especially in places like Arizona and Nevada. Neither Rubio nor Burgum would be hard to categorize as MAGA devotees; the fact that The Wall Street Journal endorsed Burgum speaks to how anti-MAGA he seemed to those on the right.
That’s what’s remarkable about this ticket, and what will be fascinating to watch as it moves on the right this year and beyond.
Trump and Vance are enthusiastic about tariffs, or what we might call economic nationalism. They are skeptical of America taking the lead in the world order. In other words, they don’t want America to be the world’s policeman, whether that be by helping Ukraine in its war with Russia or by protecting Taiwan from a future Chinese occupation. Some might call that isolationism.
In a choice that was perhaps as obvious as Bill Clinton’s choice of Al Gore in 1992, and with which he clearly ignored the old liberal wing of the Democratic Party, Trump may be using his running mate to sway the Chamber of Commerce wing of the Republican Party and continue to redefine the Republican Party in his own image.
It may take some time for the Chamber of Commerce to completely write off Trump, because for now many of its members believe he will be at least as lax on regulations as Biden, and business titans must be confident they can eventually persuade Trump to abandon his love of tariffs.
But the severing of long-standing ties between the free-market business community and the Republican Party will have consequences. Will these people become Democrats? Probably not. But they may become more formidable in the future, whether they regroup to fight for their ideology within the Republican Party, find someone to back them on the Democratic side, or become independent or third-party thinkers, as No Labels tried to suggest this year.
The selection of Vance is another sign of how Trump feels about the race. very For now, I’m confident of victory.
In some ways, his near-death experience has only strengthened his confidence: Unlike some members of his campaign team, he isn’t worried about the downsides of running against Vance, because if he thought he needed help to win, he wouldn’t have picked Vance.
Also, Trump doesn’t intend to use his running mate the same way he used Mike Pence in 2016 and 2017. Eight years ago, Pence had better ties to key Republican leaders than Trump did, but that’s not the case now, and Trump would rather have a “mini-me,” someone who can explain his populism as well (or better) than he can.
Indeed, what Trump likes most about Vance may be the intellectual cover he offers for beliefs that sometimes seem at odds with the party’s populist convention platform.
Vance is also a warrior and a willing bulldog — there was a time when a vice presidential nominee’s first job was a willingness to be a campaign attack dog — another quality Trump believes Vance brings. He’s also willing to say the quiet part out loud, as he was more overtly political than many other political leaders last weekend when he tried to blame Biden for his attacks on Trump.
In that respect, the selection of Vance signals the end of the campaign’s “can’t we all just get along” hiatus. Vance is a boxer like Trump, and the Biden team sees his selection as a kind of license to get back into campaign mode.
But the truly far-reaching impact of Vance’s selection may not extend beyond this race. What’s so surprising is what his elevation means for the course of the Republican Party.
If Trump-Vance wins this November, the Bush-Romney-Cheney wing of the Republican Party may be stuck in the wilderness not for the next four years, but for a generation.
