What's the Purpose of JD Vance?

JD Vance is now the most important person in American politics.

After the vice presidential debate, it’s become clear JD Vance will very likely play a larger role in America’s future than anyone else in this campaign. He’s not only going to be more important than Tim Walz. He’s positioned to play a larger role than both Kamala Harris and the top of his own ticket, Donald Trump.

On the surface, it’s strange how much attention we’ve already put on Vance. After all, he’s a vice presidential candidate. Even if Trump wins another term, Vance’s tenue as his second fiddle shouldn’t be any more important than Mike Pence’s already mostly forgotten role. If Trump loses, one would expect Vance to fade away like other recent vice presidential losers like Paul Ryan or Tim Kaine. Yet Vance for some reason is getting more scrutiny and attention than arguably Trump and Harris combined.

The reason everyone is fixated on Vance is because he’s not acting like a normal vice presidential candidate. That’s because he’s not. His purpose isn’t to placate an unruly constituency. It isn’t to pick off a state. It isn’t to balance the ticket, sell the party’s policies, or reflect well on the presidential nominee. He isn’t there to be a symbol or a political salesmen. He was put in place to be a political architect.

To understand what Vance is up to, you have to go back to Martin Van Buren.

WHO WAS MARTIN VAN BUREN?

The president Donald Trump is most often compared to is Andrew Jackson. Jackson wasn’t just a rough and tumble, aggressive, man-of-the-people populist. He was a political wrecking ball elected to tear down an aging, corrupted, elite system of politics.

After the Federalist Party imploded by actively opposing the War of 1812, America had it’s only era of one-party rule. It went about as well as you might think. With the Federalists broken, the reigning Democratic-Republicans successfully stamped out it’s remains and settled into what it believed would be an era of its enlightened rule. What followed was a deeply corrupt and stagnant era called the Era of Good Feelings. Without organized political opponents, officials sought to maneuver against one another for status and position instead of working for the good of the country and corruption flourished.

Disgusted at what was going on in Washington, Andrew Jackson, a former general and war hero of the War of 1812, rose up to break the system in the name of the common man.

Jackson re-ordered American politics around an agenda of breaking America’s elites. Although he won the most electoral votes in 1824, he lost the election when it was thrown into the House of Representatives—convincing Jackson he was cheated by a “corrupt bargain” in Washington. In 1828, Jackson won the presidency outright and sought to implement an agenda the establishment found alarming. He wanted to destroy the Bank of America, essentially America’s Federal Reserve. He wanted to push settlement westward so working people no longer had to submit themselves to working for a wage, and could own a plot land. He sought to remove existing officials, installing new ones he considered responsive to the popular will.

Jackson terrified an establishment that considered him a would-be tyrant. Unlike previous presidents from the Founding generation, Jackson wasn’t a political philosopher. He was self-made lawyer from the frontier of Tennessee and military man. He had rough manners. He had killed a man in a duel. Jackson also wasn’t a party builder, policy thinker, or ideological originator. He was a man of impulses who charged into battle to do whatever he thought right, and people followed him.

This is where Martin Van Buren comes in.

Van Buren was a New Yorker who understood the art of politics. He was a key player in creating the Albany Regency, America’s first genuine political machine. He supported Jackson in 1828, and in return became Jackson’s Secretary of State and closest advisor. Van Buren came into Jackson’s administration with an agenda. He believed the last decade proved one-party rule a terrible mistake, and he believed restoring two-party politics was essential to America’s political health. He resolved to use his position under Jackson to engineer it.

As Jackson’s political brain, Van Buren turned Jackson’s impulses into the foundation of a genuine party. The “Sly Fox” and “Little Magician” built efficient political machinery. He created allies and coalitions. He built messaging apparatuses. He turned Jackson’s ideas into agendas, and he based those agenda around well-identified principles. He turned Jackson’s idiosyncratic and explosive actions into an ideology and organization that could outlive him—the Democratic Party. Jackson would make Van Buren his Vice President in his second term, and in 1836 Van Buren would succeed Jackson as president.

When Van Buren is remembered these days, if he’s remembered at all, it’s as an insignificant and failed president. He was a better strategist than frontman, and due to a combination of bad decisions and bad luck Van Buren’s presidency didn’t go well. He would lose re-election in 1840, and in 1848 leave the party he created to run as a third-party candidate under the anti-slavery Free Soil Party. Despite his failures at the top of the ticket, however, Van Buren is one of the most important political figures in American history. He’s often called the father of the two-party system and architect of the Democratic Party.

What makes Van Buren particularly interesting is he created a new party based around the coalition first. Opposition parties sometimes come together as a coalition opposing something, and then must graft an ideology and agenda to hold that coalition together. That’s how the Whigs came to be, when Henry Clay sought to cement the anti-Jackson coalition into a party, or how the modern conservative movement formed to cement the coalition opposed to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Van Buren had to craft a party from the White House, uniting a coalition that formed around the personality of a man into a coalition formed around ideas.

This is what JD Vance has been put in place to do.

WHY VANCE WAS PUT INTO PLACE

Since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the MAGA movement has grappled with the problem of how to turn the movement into something that could outlast Trump the man. Trump attracted a new coalition for the Republican Party, one less corporate and more working class. Somewhat surprisingly, he attracted more Latino voters and increasingly more Black voters as well. He raised the profile of different issues like immigration. He adopted a new tone. It’s been unclear how any of this survives Donald Trump.

Trump isn’t a policy wonk. He’s a wrecking ball who helped tear the old Republican Party and party system down. Trump has impulses. He has interests and beliefs. He doesn’t have agendas and ideas. He attracts his coalition based on personal support for him. It isn’t clear what a MAGA Republican means other than support for Trump.

At the same time, there are people working in the background hoping to define and consolidate this new version of the Republican party. There are thinkers and writers associated with a new right exploring what a working-class MAGA Republican Party might mean. They’ve considered what issues it might support. They’ve explored what ideologies might unite it and hold its coalition together—not the classic twentieth-century fusion conservative vision of William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan. Many of these ideas conflict with the previous pillars of Republican politics, and in fact many people and ideas that once embraced the conservative movement’s fusion conservatism have since become independents or democrats.

There are also people behind the scenes unhappy with the direction of the current Democratic Party who recognize the opportunity to shape a new Republican Party. Some are influential figures, and some money people newly getting involved in active politics. Since the old Republican Party is dead, and the new one still undefined, they see an opportunity to build something different that they like under the MAGA umbrella. Whoever gets to define the framework of this new Republican Party gets to define the shape of America’s political future.

This is why JD Vance has been put into place.

Over the first part of this campaign, the political press has mostly rolled their eyes at Vance’s choice as a vice presidential candidate because he lacks the usual profile and skills. He’s an ambitious wonk from Yale who got into politics for the ideas. He isn’t exceptionally skilled on the stump. He isn’t cool. He isn’t the guy who kisses babies with which you want to have a beer. He’s not a symbol for any needed group. He’s not particularly affable or charismatic. He doesn’t balance the ticket. He has a long track record of saying specific and unusual things that can be wielded against him. None of that has anything to do with why Vance was put into the vice presidential slot.

People who hope to shape the next version of the Republican Party helped put Vance into this role because they thought he could be an ideological architect. He has the aptitude and inclination to discover how to turn MAGA from an impulse into a party that go on for decades post-Trump. His job is to be Martin Van Buren.

WHAT VANCE WAS DOING AT THE DEBATE

Until the vice presidential debate, I didn’t think Vance would outlast this campaign. After watching it, I’m now sure he’s going to be around for a long time. I’ve come to understand what others dismissed as political mistakes are actually the actions of a man playing an entirely different game.

Vance isn’t acting like a traditional politician selling a message. His actions aren’t even driven by winning this election. What Vance is doing is more like a start-up founder looking to build a minimum viable product. Vance is exploring various ideas and messages in public, and then adjusting course based on how the audience responds. He’s like a stand-up comedian trying out new material in the clubs to find his best hour to use in his next Netflix special.

Over his short career, Vance has already had four separate political identities.

• He emerged as a darling of the establishment, an ivy league educated venture capitalist and writer from a difficult background who could speak about the failings of America’s rural and working class. They made his book a hit and even turned it into a movie with Glenn Close.

• Then Vance entered politics as a Never Trumper working to position Republicans and himself for a post-Trump future.

• Seeing the change in the Republican coalition, he converted to a hard core MAGA Republican throwing raw meat to the MAGA base.

• Now, as a vice presidential candidate, he has emerged anew again as a reasoned policy guy speaking to MAGA priorities, but in new conciliatory terms.

To the establishment this reads as unprincipled political waffling by an ambitious pol shifting with the winds. I suspect it’s something else. He isn’t acting like a normal politician. He isn’t even there to help Trump win. He’s there to institutionalize the coalition Trump accidentally built. The Republican Party has a new coalition of supporters, new impulses, and new priorities. Its problem is turning this coalition into a something other candidates can run on and support. Its challenge is creating something that won’t fall apart in a few years like Ross Perot’s Reform Party, but will hold this coalition together for decades to come. Vance is developing and testing out ideas, messages, and potential alliances to make that happen.

This is why everyone misunderstands what Vance is doing. He’s there to be the next Martin Van Buren, and whether Trump wins or loses he’s not going anywhere. In fact, I think he’s going to be a player for a long time to come and might well be a catalyst for the consolidation of new American parties.

Do you think JD Vance might be the next Martin Van Buren? Join the community in the comments.