Vice President JD Vance has a big decision to make. As soon as the US midterm elections are over, the pressure will be on to declare his intention to replace his boss at the White House. An early foray into this minefield didn’t go well. In an interview with journalist Mike Halperin on Air Force Two, Vance said: “Look, I think if I run, the President will endorse me.”
You think? The President wasn’t having any of his cheek. Asked if Vance was right about this at a White House event, Donald Trump shook his head. “Well, I’ll tell you this,” he answered. “He’s a very talented person, he’s a very good person, but we’ve, literally, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it.”
The camera panned to Vance, who was standing behind him looking embarrassed. “No sir,” he blushed. “I said that too.” Indeed, the Vice President had admitted in his interview with Halperin that he hadn’t discussed the matter with Trump.
However, the President wasn’t finished yet. “It’s early, very early right now,” he added. “We have to get through the midterms, see how it goes.” Two days later, at a campaign rally in Iowa, Trump returned to one of his favourite topics – standing for a third presidential term himself.
“I think the law says that I’m not allowed to run again. I studied that phrase forever. Unfortunately, it’s quite concise. Well, the one thing that’s different, they cheated us on the second one, because we won it three times. So I think I have the right to run again,” he claimed.
Trump can sound like a broken record about this, but he’s convinced himself he’s owed a third term. If Joe Biden could claim to be running for president right up to the wire in summer 2024, Trump is surely thinking: why can’t I pull off the same trick? If nothing else, toying with the idea of a third term and pursuing every (fruitless) legal avenue to secure it once the midterms are over would help to prevent him from becoming a lame-duck president.
Whenever Trump is faced with an unpleasant decision or legal problem, he adopts the strategy of “delay, denigrate, deny”. He could spin the question of a third term well into the last two years of his presidency. But this would leave his Vice President in a tight spot. Evidence is mounting that Vance’s heart is not in becoming the next Kamala Harris.
In nearly 200 years, only one Vice President has succeeded in replacing their boss at the ballot box: George HW Bush, and he succeeded the popular Ronald Reagan. In contrast, Trump is historically underwater with voters, who disapprove of his performance according to the latest New York Times poll of polls.
The 41-year-old Vance has been sending out some bat squeaks of doubt about his future, at least as far as the next presidential contest is concerned. Asked at a CBS News town hall in Michigan whether there was a chance he might not run in 2028, he replied: “Of course there’s a chance.”
He added: “The way that I think about life, big life decisions – my wife will tell you this: I’m a procrastinator. I hate thinking about it.” For the first time, he admitted Usha might not be keen on remaining in the limelight. “We’ve got four little kids. My wife has never loved politics, she loves public service.”
There was a further sign of hesitation in his interview with Halperin. Although he sounded bullish about securing Trump’s endorsement, he admitted “no one has any idea what the hell is going on” as far as the midterm elections are concerned. A poor result, particularly in his home state of Ohio, could upend his plans. Solidly Republican since 2016, the Democrats are currently leading the polls for Ohio Senate and governor by three to four points.
Vance this week rallied behind his friend Vivek Ramaswamy, who is standing for governor, after the latter aired a despicable ad in which the mother of the Democratic candidate, Amy Acton, accused her daughter of being a liar. What the ad didn’t say was that Acton was removed from her mother’s custody after her stepfather was charged with raping her at the age of 12. That didn’t seem to bother Vance, who applauded the ad’s “audacity” and told disgusted Republicans to “stop whining about it”.
It’s not just Vance’s lack of empathy that could turn off voters. He sometimes doubts his own campaigning skills. “Like sometimes you know media scrutiny, pressure, policy. I can be terrible at it, and that is the sort of thing that maybe you know, so I don’t know,” he told Halperin.
This week, a video went viral showing Vance being snubbed in the locker room of the Ohioan American football team, the Cincinnati Bengals. Only one player, Drew Sample, appeared to shake his hand as the rest of the players filed silently by.
For Trump, who revels in all-American sports, this kind of incident leaves Vance with a big question mark over his prospects. Trump is never going to think anyone, least of all his Vice President, could be a better candidate than himself. You can count on him avoiding endorsing a successor for as long as he can get away with it. By the time he does, Vance may find that, like Harris in 2024, it has come too late.