Vance stressed Israel’s strategic value to America, as well as the fact that it is a genuine ally, and not just a client state

Photo: Shutterstock.com / Lev Radin

I confess that I was not very happy with Donald Trump’s choice of J.D. Vance as his vice presidential candidate. His conversion from Never Trumper in 2016 to eagerly seeking Trump’s crucial endorsement in his 2021 Senate primary battle struck me as too nakedly ambitious. Moreover, I prefer presidential candidates who have served as governors, and thus accrued executive experience, as opposed to senators, who mostly just talk.

Nor was my enthusiasm for Vance increased by Tucker Carlson’s endorsement of him. Quite the opposite. Carlson’s repeated mutterings about dark forces targeting American Christians — and not religion in general — makes me nervous. And Carlson’s recent criticism of Ben Shapiro for being interested only in Israel and not the problems of his own country, and his interview with a pro-Hamas Anglican clergyman from Bethlehem, to alert his listeners to the situation of Christians in Israel, fully confirmed suspicions of his anti-Semitic leanings.

It did not occur to Carlson to mention that Israel is the only country in the Middle East whose Christian population is growing, or that Christians have almost disappeared from Bethlehem, after being a majority when the Palestinian Authority took over governing the city.

(I admit, however, that Vance looked perfectly comfortable in a viral video with chassidic singer Shulem Lemmer and a large group of chassidim at a fundraiser in February.)

Then there was Vance’s remark about Ukraine, “I don’t really care what happens in Ukraine, one way or the other.” Too flippant by far. Decent people everywhere should care about what happens and should be appalled both by Russia’s seizure of lands no longer theirs and by their deliberate targeting of Ukrainian civilians. Moreover, the remark betokened isolationist leanings that usually go together with a similar indifference to Israel and criticism of the United States for spending too much on Israel.

Like many who have served abroad in the military — e.g., former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard — Vance has been outspoken in his criticism of the war in Iraq and foreign military involvement. That goes against my early neoconservative leanings. But perhaps I should temper some of my enthusiasm for US wars abroad, including both of those in Iraq, with an acknowledgment that I won’t be the one serving.

AS A CONSEQUENCE of the above misgivings about Vance, I spent the last couple of days listening to some of his speeches and reading about him. Here are my findings.

He is extremely articulate and thoughtful. He does not shout, and he makes cogent arguments. One line that struck me came in the midst of a discussion about why he is skeptical concerning American support for Ukraine: “We can debate that. And I’d be happy to have that discussion.”

That is not a sentiment that one hears frequently in the United States today. Here is someone who has obviously absorbed a great deal of information in a relatively short time, and would seem to possess genuine intellectual curiosity. He acknowledges that most important public policy questions have more than one side to them.

Donald Trump’s chief political virtue is that he is not a snob. He does not look down on those less favored by birth or education. Nor is he awed by those with impressive credentials or their received wisdom. But he cannot — at least at this stage of his life — articulate a clear vision or philosophy. He speaks in slogans.

Vance does not self-evidently bring much to Trump in the Electoral College or notably expand the latter’s base. But what he does bring is a clear political philosophy, along with a set of policy proposals to go with it.

The Forward pronounced the kippah-wearing Yoram Hazony his favorite political theorist. Hazony is the principal organizer of the annual National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., where Vance has spoken as frequently as any national politician. At the center of Hazony’s thought lies national sovereignty, and what follows from it. The nation owes its citizens the duty to value their lives over those of noncitizens, and its citizens owe that same duty to one another. That model is no doubt derived, at least for Hazony, from the special duties Jews owe to one another.

Echoes of Hazony could be heard in Vance’s acceptance speech when he declared, “America is not just an idea... it is a nation.” At the 2021 National Conservatism Conference, Vance told Antonio Garcia Martinez (“Drinking with J.D. Vance,” Tablet Magazine, July 16, 2024), that the thing he admired most about Israel is that it is a country and nation that doesn’t hate its own people. “[In Israel,] they care about each other. I really admire that.”

He went on to note that Israel is the only advanced country in the entire world with birth rates above replacement level. And he saw in that an important lesson for the United States: “When you develop a civilization that’s rooted in self-love and patriotism, you don’t have a declining birth rate.”

Much of Vance’s thinking about economic policy derives from that conception of a nation as obligated to care about all its citizens. Free trade agreements and outsourcing to China, for instance, constitute of an abandonment of large numbers of America workers — Obama’s “bitter clingers” or Hilary Clinton’s “deplorables” — particularly in places like Middletown, Ohio, where Vance grew up.

For an elaboration of Vance and the “New Right’s” thinking on the subject, Oren Cass’s The Once and Future Worker, a book widely praised by figures on both the right and left, is a good place to start. Cass, who is just a couple of years older than Vance, began as a traditional Republican; while still at Harvard Law School, he was the domestic affairs director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign.

But he grew skeptical of the tendency to measure the strength of the economy by the stock market. Big tech companies, producing “addictive algorithms,” may be the golden goose of the stock market, he argues, but do not, in and of themselves, constitute a strong economy. Similarly, taking the average wealth of Bill Gates and 100,000 struggling blue-collar workers does not provide proof of a healthy economy. Rather, in Cass’s view, the central focus of public policy should be ensuring that workers can support strong families and communities.

And that requires an industrial policy designed to ensure that lots of things are made in America, not just that America generates lots of highly valued pieces of paper. Even Ronald Reagan was a protectionist, Cass notes: He pressured Japanese automakers to produce their cars in America.

Trade between nations is good, Cass told UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers in a recent interview, as long as they are trading things (i.e., manufactured goods) for things. But the establishment has too often made a fetish of free trade, without sufficiently noting the ways in which China, for instance, distorts its domestic market and creates barriers to entry.

In matters economic, “national conservatism” or the so-called New Right is a radical departure from traditional Republican orthodoxy. National Review’s Jim Geraghty, for instance, acknowledged that Vance had “hit it out of the park” in his acceptance speech, unfortunately (in Geraghty’s eyes) to advance a series of dangerous prescriptions: “protectionism, populism, nationalism, industrial policy, and quasi-isolationism.”

The original American agrarian populism of the late 19th century grew out of a desire to recreate an agrarian America that had been rendered obsolete by dramatic advances in farm productivity that required far fewer farm workers. In short, it was in conflict with reality.

It remains to be seen whether the hope of recreating a strong American manufacturing sector is similarly at odds with economic reality or if the cost will prove too high in terms of prices to consumers. I would love to hear Thomas Sowell and Oren Cass discuss the question. But Cass’s critique of the traditional economic thinking of America elites and his concern with the human carnage of deaths and despair and the like across a wide swath of the country are worth attending to.

I do not doubt Vance’s sincerity in that regard. He has witnessed the impact of the collapse of the Rust Belt firsthand, in the effects on his own family and on those with whom he grew up. No doubt ambition played a role in his shift in his view of Trump. But I suspect he also came to see Trump as the politician most tuned into the woes of the American working class, and the least devoted to doctrinaire free-market economics. As Trump concluded his own acceptance speech, “To all of the forgotten men and women who have been neglected, abandoned, and left behind, you will be forgotten no longer.”

WHATEVER MY LARGER misgivings about Vance’s isolationism, he did a good job of distinguishing his views on Ukraine from those on Israel in a recent speech, “Why We Should Care about Israel.” His opposition to an open checkbook to Ukraine is first and foremost that there is no strategic end in sight. And secondly, that NATO is supposed to be an alliance to protect Europe from Russia, but the Europeans are not pulling their fair share, and will not as they deindustrialize their economies in pursuit of an implausible Green agenda.

By contrast, Vance stressed Israel’s strategic value to America, as well as the fact that it is a genuine ally, and not just a client state. He described Israel as one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. In a world in which drones play an ever-larger role, and favor the offense, since the amounts required to shoot down a drone are 10 to 100 times greater than the cost of producing the drone, Israel’s work on laser defense — Iron Beam — is likely to play a decisive role.

“America cannot do everything,” and therefore must set strategic priorities, is Vance’s starting point. For him, the first priority is China and East Asia. And that is where Israel plays a crucial role, according to Vance. Israel, in conjunction with the Sunni states, could provide a counterbalance and check on Iran and its proxies, and allow the United States to remove forces from the Middle East.

But in order for Israel to do so, it must first defeat Hamas. Vance gave short shrift, as have I on frequent occasions, to the argument that Hamas cannot be defeated because it is an ideology. Yes, but it can be defeated as an effective military force, just as were ISIS and Al-Qaeda. And that is necessary for it to play its crucial regional role together with the Sunni states.

IF DONALD TRUMP prevails in November, I would expect Vance to be an unusually influential vice-president. Trump has little patience for the details of policy. Vance, in contrast, has plenty. And he enjoys the sponsorship of Trump’s sons, and so would not be viewed as a constant threat, as long as he avoids taking too much of the limelight from his boss.

And if a Trump presidency were to be successful — like his election, by no means a certainty — Vance would be well-positioned to succeed him in 2028, as the second youngest president in American history. A long road from the dysfunctional upbringing that he so movingly described in Hillbilly Elegy in a very short time.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1021. Yonoson Rosenblum may be contacted directly at rosenblum@mishpacha.com)