“The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.” That is how John Nance Garner, who served as the nation’s No. 2 official from 1933 to 1941 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, described the job. To many, that assessment would seem accurate.
The only defined role of the vice president in the Constitution is to cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate and to become president if the commander in chief dies, resigns or is removed. That makes the veep’s position particularly powerless in the grand scheme on Capitol Hill, as well as one prone to mockery. In the past election cycle, Kamala Harris saw two sides of this coin as she struggled both to deflect being lumped in with Joe Biden’s unpopular decisions and to convince voters that she exerted enough sway over the executive process to be prepared for the world’s toughest job. She’s not alone. Virtually every vice president (aside from the unprecedentedly powerful Dick Cheney) has struggled to find meaning in the role.
But even so, it seems that none has had it harder than J.D. Vance.
As the second Donald Trump presidency hits its four-month mark, the vice president has been largely tucked away as other members of the administration, like Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., take more central roles. Domestically, he mainly has been utilized as an ideological promoter of Trumpism, albeit an often clueless one.
It’s unclear how involved Vance is in the administration, or how informed he is about White House affairs. In fact, a week before the inauguration, he said to violent Jan. 6 rioters, “Obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” Yet even so, around 1,500 were on the first day of Trump’s return to office. Satirical newspaper The Onion even lampooned this by publishing the headline “J.D. Vance Begins to Suspect There Another Group Chat.”
Already mocked for his awkward demeanor and gaffes, he is now a widely unpopular public official, even lagging behind Trump’s punitive 39% approval rating in most polls. Online, his official portrait has even been subject to ridicule, with his face edited in internet memes to look like a baby.
His main moments to “shine” have so far been his work overseas. Long a hawkish supporter of America First ideals, his foreign trips have drawn heavy criticism for echoing Trump’s most extreme policies..
At the February Munich Security Conference, he described a “threat from within” Europe as undermining democracy and preventing far-right parties from entering government. This was overshadowed later that month when, alongside Trump, he bashed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House for his requests for aid, accusing him of hosting a “propaganda tour” of the war-torn nation. He was also ridiculed across the board for his visit to Greenland, where he stated that Denmark had “not done a good job” running the territory and continued to promote an American takeover of the island. He was met by hundreds of protesters and mocked widely for his apparent lack of realization that he needed a jacket for the freezing weather.
He even met with a visibly uninspired Pope Francis the day before his death, prompting a wave of memes joking that his presence alone caused the pope’s death.
Right now, most veeps in a lame-duck administration would at least be trying to garner support for their own run for the White House, but even those efforts have been watered down by his boss’ musings on an unconstitutional third term. To make matters worse, when the president finally gave an answer to who he could see as a successor, he listed not only Vance but also Secretary of State Marco Rubio, if not a so-called “Trump dynasty.”
J.D. Vance’s political future essentially now boils down to the success and popularity of Donald Trump over the next four years, whose approvals are already underwater on almost every issue just four months removed from his election. Should Vance run for president, he’ll be haunted by almost every controversy and misstep involving the president, which, if the polls are any indicator, are plentiful. Even if he scrapes out his own platform and distances himself from the MAGA movement, he’ll be bashed as a turncoat by the right and a hypocrite by the left, leaving ideological gaps in the electorate up for grabs.
And that’s just if he clinches the Republican nomination, which could be a cage fight between MAGA ideologues, never-Trumpers and classic conservatives nostalgic for Reagan-era politics. Speculated candidates like Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio hold far more charisma and more dedicated bases than the veep, whose counterproductive gaffes and past criticisms of Trump as potentially being “America’s Hitler” have drawn the ire of a number of Republicans, including one unnamed GOP representative who claimed that “9 out of 10 people on our side would say he’s the wrong pick”, following his selection as Trump’s running mate.
He could very well avoid immediate presidential politics and stake out some other role, potentially returning to Congress or vying for a governorship, which former Vice President Kamala Harris is reportedly mulling. Any such move would depend on the political climate at the time. The only modern precedent of a successful political comeback for a vice president was in 1970, when Hubert Humphrey won a Senate seat from Minnesota. Vance’s political mettle for such offices was only tested in his successful 2022 bid for the Senate, when he underperformed in deep-red Ohio and only rose ahead of primary opponents in the polls after locking in Trump’s endorsement.
Whichever future in politics he takes, these next four years are critical to shaping his choices. His vice presidency, while still relatively new, is already overshadowed by louder voices in the Trump administration. Whatever news he does make is prone to immediate mockery by both the media and the public at large. If he tries to take a more dominant role in the White House, he could be left vulnerable to the president’s well-documented jealousy toward those making more headlines than him. If he tries to navigate mostly outside of the press’ radar during a presumably chaotic term, then his presence could fade into obscurity and lead to the rise of new leaders.
If anything, he needs a new ideological definition. But if he returns to his more baseline conservative convictions of the past, he could risk scrutiny from the MAGA base and potentially alienate a critical portion of the Republican electorate. He could even receive blowback from his boss and go down the route of Mike Pence, whose determination to certify the results of the 2020 election for Joe Biden led to a very public dispute with Trump and intense distaste among the president’s followers. However, digging into the MAGA playbook could be no better an option. Unless midterm results prompt a shift, which is highly unlikely for the dogged Trump, then loyally backing the White House’s unpopular policies won’t gain many new voters, especially not if the awkward and more soft-spoken Vance is the one communicating them.
In many ways, Vance is a pariah in Washington. He’s despised both by Trump loyalists as a flip-flopper and standard conservatives as an extremist. His embracement of the MAGA movement may have been the most politically advantageous move to gain recognition in the Biden years, but the president’s almost unshakeable grip on his followers mutes Vance’s position and diminishes it to little more than blind obedience with little say on or knowledge about the inner-workings of Trumpian policy. Yet even as a vastly uninfluential figure, he is still saddled with all the unpopularity of the administration and tasked with the most unwanted jobs a veep can have. His precarious position is one few would desire: even Dan “I didn’t live in this century” Quayle would scoff at an opportunity to trade places with him.
Any politician should strive for continued popularity and recognition, yet that goal is a seemingly impossible one to achieve for Vance. For Garner, the role wasn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss. For Vance, it isn’t worth a mountainful.
