In light of J.D. Vance’s stirring speech last week to the Munich Security Conference, we’re republishing Ramesh Thakur’s Spectator Australia article from July, when Trump announced Vance as his VP pick – and thus spelled the long-overdue end of the neoconservative movement.
The phoenix-like rise of a bleeding Trump, with a fist-bumping chorus of “Fight! Fight! Fight!”, signalled the triumph of Trumpism over the remaining anti-Trumpers in the party. Every time that picture is seen – we will assuredly see it endlessly until the election and periodically thereafter – the world will be reminded of what strength and defiance look like. The positioning of the slain firefighter’s uniform on the stage during Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention and the poignant gesture of tenderly kissing his helmet offered a window into the human side that Trump rarely shows in public. So too, the cascade of security failures notwithstanding, Trump’s tribute to the Secret Service agents who rushed to smother him with their bodies as human shields in the chaotic moments when no one knew how many assassins had infiltrated the crowd. And also to the crowd which stayed orderly and burst into chants of ‘USA’ last witnessed in New York after 9/11.
Other potential picks for a running mate (who alone of the senior advisers cannot be fired) might have better helped Trump to win the election, but 39 year-old J.D. Vance offers the best chance to entrench the MAGA revolution in and beyond a second Trump administration. The selection caused a meltdown among those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Three articles on Sunday sealed the deal for me. Mark Episkopos explained on Responsible Statecraft the choice is principally about US foreign policy. John Bolton, who has caused much lasting damage to US global interests, wrote in the UK Telegraph that the selection is “profoundly disturbing in its implications for American foreign policy in a Trump Presidency”. Of course, Bolton is a leading representative of the neoconservatives and, Paul du Quenoy explained in Newsweek, the nomination of Vance “spells the final and long-overdue end of the neoconservative movement”. Hallelujah!
Vance grew up an Appalachian hillbilly, overcame ‘white trash’ origins and a dysfunctional family, joined the Marines and leveraged military service into degrees from Ohio State and Yale. His social, economic and governing philosophies are the result of this hardscrabble back story. His business and political success offers a lesson in redemption that is the very essence of the American dream. Between Vance and Kamala Harris, he is the underprivileged kid from Middletown, Ohio who made good while she is a California child of privilege and, as an adult, the beneficiary of political patronage starting with San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. Usha Vance, his wife, represents another stream in the American dream, of immigrants who come to America as the land of opportunity where education, talent and hard work are rewarded. Indo-Americans have achieved success without victimhood and grievance.
Vance is exceptionally attuned to the ravages of American de-industrialisation, with US manufacturing hollowed out, jobs shipped overseas and swathes of the homeland turned into a wasteland along the rust belt. As Vance said in his acceptance speech, China built its middle class on the backs of growing numbers of unemployed Americans. The message of a second Trump administration to China will be: if you want to sell it here, you have to build it here. Vance similarly prioritises the health of the US economy above the health of the planet under the alleged threat from ‘global warming’. The commitment to reversing this destructive trend rests equally powerfully on the recognition of the importance of dignity conferred on human beings by productive work and living wages and the role of well-paying jobs in sustaining stable family life. He brought his compelling back story to life in his acceptance speech and the introduction of his previously drug-addled and serially partnered mother, clean and sober now for more than nine years, to the whole nation was a fitting culmination of his life story to date.
The media still don’t get the twin reality that Trump has no interest in appeasing them but speaks directly to his base, and the latter share his contempt for the press. His voters believe him when he says they are the real targets of the Blob, he is all that stands between them and the Blob and that he literally took a bullet for them. To grasp the need and urgency to drain the swamp in Washington, look across to the Starmer Government’s slew of proposals to expand the entrenched administrative state, reduce freedom and destroy productive work with the many distractions of social justice activism. A man who came within an inch of having his head blown off on national TV has earned the right to ramble in his first public speech since. To me it came across as more of a conversation with the American people by an unusually subdued and sombre leader.
Instead of apologising, retreating and compromising, Trump doubles down and counterpunches in the war against the administrative-legal-industrial complex. They have slandered him, undermined him at every turn, persecuted him, tried to bankrupt and imprison him, and now even shot him. But still he picks himself up, missing shoes and all, and shouts defiance in the face of mortal threats. Millions of Americans are exhilarated by Trump’s visceral show of raw and muscular patriotism. Vance’s instincts too are not to flinch but to go all-in to turn the American nightmare into the American dream once again. His youth will ensure a continuation of Trumpism after Trump by an articulate and thoughtful politician, who in foreign policy will shy away from military adventurism but punch hard if and when necessary to defend American interests and values, and in personal traits comes without the crude vulgarities of his boss that millions of Americans are unable to get past in order to appreciate his policies and achievements.
Vance is a champion of the post-liberal Right. To decry him as isolationist betrays wilful blindness. He represents realism and restraint alongside strength. He has remained steadfast in US support for Israel in its war with Hamas; questions why Europe, comparable in wealth and population to America, cannot deal with Ukraine on its own (its military under-spending is “an implied tax on the American people to allow for the security of Europe”, he wrote in the Financial Times); and holds Asia to be the key strategic battleground in the foreseeable future. Similarly, Vance is no more racist and anti-immigrant than Trump. Both welcome legal immigrants who share in and commit to core American values. Both oppose discrimination – positive and negative – based on faith and skin colour. Why wouldn’t Vance want equality of opportunity for his own children?
Trump’s appeal comes from being different from the run-of-the-mill political leader, backed by an unmatched ability to project grit and promise a better future – just what the nation craves and the world needs in these challenging times. Australian conservatives could do with a Trump-Vance combination whose focus is on the wellbeing of productive workers on the farms and in the factories.
Ramesh Thakur is a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Emeritus Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, the Australian National University. This article was first published in Spectator Australia.
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