by PAUL COLLITS – A PHRASE that you probably will never come across in the history books on American politics is “he was a consequential vice president”.
Obviously, no one would ever include “she” in such a statement. There has only ever been one of those – Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin never came close, mercifully.
- Trump’s prescient pick might just prove to be his greatest triumph.
- JD Vance brings a little more to the table than the average VP.
- The tectonic plates of geopolitics have shifted. Driven by the VP as much as by Trump.
Kamila Harris is of no consequence, other than helping usher in the Trump 47 revolution.
Until now, the very idea of a consequential VP has been ludicrous. They are not there to be consequential.
EXAGGERATED
They have their uses for presidential candidates during campaigns, though that might itself be exaggerated.
Some VPs have been consequential after leaving office. Al Gore is, of course, the prime example. Consequential not in a good way. But consequential nonetheless.
He has played his part in ending the era of the glorious industrial revolution and all of its manifest benefits to mankind. The other VP of great post-VP consequence was LBJ.
He gave us civil rights, Vietnam and the “great society”. A very, very mixed bag.
Others have been ridiculed – see under Dan Quayle – or forced to leave office in disgrace, like Spiro Agnew.
Gerald Ford stepped up to the plate for the big gig, but slithered off the stage after a very short stand-in presidency.
Bush 41 was an invisible VP for eight years, admittedly hidden in the shadows of a giant president of great consequence. His only lasting achievement upon taking the higher office was to bequeath the 21st century the phrase “coalition of the willing”.
For many presidential elections and the choices of VP candidates, we can only say “thank God” they never had the chance to diminish us. Think Tim Walz and Tim Kaine.
What is it with Democrats and ineffectual Tims? Walz has been posited as a Democrat 2028 candidate. Oh bless!
The greatest, perhaps only, contra-example of VP inconsequentialism has been suggested to be Dick Cheney.
Many argued that he was George W’s real president. Yes and no.
There was a whole cabal of neocons propping up Bush 43. Dick was but one of these. And there were counterweights in that administration, like Colin Powell.
(The White House Correspondents’ Dinner to mark 43’s departure provided some Dick Cheney humour. If he was good at anything, W did humour well, especially self-deprecating humour like Reagan, his hero. But Reagan had other things going for him. Bush’s humour was fun. His disastrous administration remains unforgiven.)
The case of Pence is interesting. He was accidentally consequential, being selected (disastrously) to oversee the Trump COVID response.
His acts of bastardry in 2020, whether strategic or simply the result of bungling incompetence and obsequiousness before the might of Big Pharma, helped bring down the Trump 1.0 administration and helped to create American tyranny.
Perhaps the VP of greatest consequence was fictional, and appeared in the form of Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
The cultural Left is good at producing fictional character heroes on their team. See also under The American President. I preferred Michael Douglas in Falling Down.
Which brings us to the incumbent.
KNOB
For the relentlessly inconsequential Premier of Western Australia – go on, I challenge you, what’s his name? – JD Vance is a “knob”.
Good one, Roger Cook. Roger, a minnow in a minnow’s land, is a little like the sad Democrats sitting in the corner holding placards during Trump’s address to Congress.
Nothing suggests Leftist decline like this charade does. Whether it is in Washington DC or in Perth.
As US political commentator Jack Posobiec says: “The reason the libs have resorted to these ridiculous stunts is they have no message. No answer for all of the popular things that Trump is doing, and they know it.”
Yes, they know it. Even in faraway, inconsequential Western Australia. Pathetic jibes in the face of the globally resented Trump revolution.
These “unhinged” goons are raising the stakes in the performative, global TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) task they all share.
JD Vance brings a little more to the table than the average VP.
His ascension reflects a combination of skill-set, accomplishment, broad and deep intelligence, a now familiar and compelling personal story and what we used to call “the common touch”. He is no Dan Quayle.
There is no need to repeat here his qualifications. What is far more interesting is his insertion into the Trump game plan.
Most VPs are only there to help get the president elected. That was never Trump’s game plan.
As in so many other areas, Trump broke the mould with his veep selection. Trump’s prescient pick might just prove to be his greatest triumph. He (or his transition team) deliberately chose a VP of consequence. And he unleashed him.
No making the Pence mistake a second time.
Vance’s incursions have been highly visible and deliberate. Strategic plays. The list is now familiar. The Munich speech.
At all of the important Oval Office meetings with the procession of Leftist world leaders, Vance doesn’t just sit on the couch and smile silently. His interventions are pointed. He is in the face of his and Trump’s opponents. Placing stakes in the ground, over and over.
They are, typically, the things that get reported. He is riling the right people. And Trump isn’t remotely threatened by the Veep’s activism.
His interventions are always on point, Trump-wise. Vance is providing cover and taking enemy shots. With aplomb and equanimity.
People refer to the “Trump/Vance doctrine”. When was the last time that a new international relations approach contained both names?
Perhaps Nixon-Kissinger was the last time people spoke of a combo doctrine. Half a century ago. And the stakes are far higher now.
These two are re-writing international relations. Vance was right in the thick of it in the infamous Zelensky Oval office meeting. As he was with Sir Groomer. Compact magazine argues that the War Party is already history:
The February 28 Oval Office brawl between Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump and JD Vance offered a stark reminder that, all too often, wars do not end when rational calculation would dictate.
But, rather end when all those who want to fight to the death have done so.
This is why casualties increase in inverse proportion to the hope of victory – think here of Germany after Stalingrad or the Confederacy after Gettysburg.
As Vance warned Zelensky, Ukraine is close to manpower exhaustion. But what we saw in the Oval Office was a leader too consumed by rage to care.
“I think it’s good for the American people to see what’s going on,” President Trump declared at the time. “The hatred Zelensky has got for Putin, it’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate. He’s got tremendous hatred, and I understand that.”
These are not random talking points.
US author NS Lyons has weighed in: “The political elite of Europe and the Anglosphere appeared shocked by JD Vance’s wonderfully blunt speech in Munich last month. The US Vice President declared Washington’s top security concern to be ‘the threat from within’ the NATO alliance and castigated assembled leaders for their increasingly brazen assaults on ‘democratic values’, including censoring speech, suppressing popular opposition Parties and cancelling elections.
FEIGNED
“But, if this shock isn’t feigned, then it is rather remarkable given that these elites were in their own way already effectively at war with the United States. All Vance did was point out the nature of this hidden conflict.”
The tectonic plates of geopolitics have shifted. Driven by the VP as much as by Trump – in a mere month or so. It may well be a collaboration for the ages.
Vance is front and centre here. A thinker, a communicator, a pugilist, a bomb thrower and a strategist.
He is in the background and in the foreground, simultaneously. A player at the meetings that matter. Deployed, complementary and effective. Perhaps he’s a Tony Abbott writ large, on the big stage, unleashed and unconstrained.
People describe Vance as 48. He is already the frontrunner, by a country mile, for 2028. It is an early call. But not an unserious one.
Some might argue that pronouncing a VP as consequential after a couple of months is crazy and premature. Well, mostly VPs are pronounced (inevitably) as inconsequential only after four or eight years.
The incumbent has done more impactful things in a few weeks than any of the others ever did.
He could retire now and say, “mission accomplished”. That is how far he has moved the ground, already. He has shaken the tree.
I suspect that, in a hundred years, they will still be talking about the elegiac Appalachian hillbilly. Even if he doesn’t become 48.
I’m not sure that Roger Cook will ever be in the history books. Even as footnote.PC
