Being vice president of the United States is a strange role. John Nance Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s understudy for his first two terms, dismissed the office as ‘not worth a bucket of warm piss’, but it was the first incumbent, John Adams, who put his finger on its one transcendent quality. ‘I am vice president. In this I am nothing, but I may be everything.’
That nod to ‘everything’ makes Vice President J.D. Vance important. By the next presidential election in November 2028, Donald Trump will be 82, and unless he defies any rational reading of the 22nd amendment, he cannot continue as president. That places Vance in the pound seats to pick up the Maga banner and lead Trump’s movement forward. So what he thinks matters.
Europe should be on notice: we are not much liked
This week Vice President Vance gave his first interview to a European publication, talking to UnHerd’s Sohrab Ahmari.
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