Smooth Ride

Senator J.D. Vance 

Vice-Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech 

Milwaukee WI July 17, 2024

In his short political career Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio has displayed a penchant for fiery discourse. Wisely, he read the immediate circumstances as a driver would read a street where all the lights were green and the traffic was light but there was no need to rev the engine. Vance chose to cruise instead of go fast and furious.

VP nominees, like all convention speakers, are tasked with unifying the party faithful in and out of the hall, typically through provocations against the opposing party and tributes to the man or woman at the top of the ticket. Vance did not have to unify; that was accomplished by Trump’s undefeated primary season and solidified by the failed assassination attempt. Nor did he need to attack Biden and the Democrats full blast; they are stuck in an intraparty crisis.

And thus in his debut on the national stage Vance could focus on the strategic task set for him during the fall: play up his ties to working class residents of three swing states: Michigan (mentioned six times), Pennsylvania (five), and Wisconsin (three). His similarly populated home state of Ohio came in for 10 shout-outs (12 if you count The Ohio State University). Kentucky, the state where he was famously born and raised, garnered four. The remaining 45 states went unacknowledged. No sea-to-shining-sea tour required. 

From his autobiographical storehouse Vance selected one anecdote to appeal to gun lovers (his beloved Mamaw stashed 19 of them around her house) and another to hearten drug addicts and their families: his equally beloved mother, on site to take a bow, was recognized for reaching ten years clean and sober. Vance was introduced by his wife. He praised Trump as a family man. The culminating tale he chose to tell was set in his family’s cemetery plot in Eastern Kentucky. Vance artfully used it to bridge his forebears and progeny in a paean to America as a nation:

[I]f, as I hope, my wife and I are eventually laid to rest there, and our kids follow us, there will be seven generations just in that small mountain cemetery plot in eastern Kentucky. Seven generations of people who have fought for this country. Who have built this country. Who have made things in this country. And who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to. “Now. Now that’s not just an idea, my friends….That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home….

To the people of Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and every corner of our nation: I promise you this — I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from.

The word “fight,” a staple of political rhetoric, had acquired extra resonance when Trump uttered it after being shot. Vance rendered fighting for one’s literal home land a supreme virtue. That was what Mamaw’s guns were for, and the root concept as well for the Trump/Vance issue positions on trade, immigration, housing, and economic revitalization.

Earlier in his address Vance navigated a masterful turn through the age issue. It required some skill because while Biden has been beleaguered by his age Trump is not far behind on the chronological odometer. Vance’s first sally against the president went as follows:

When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico.

This juxtaposition of Biden as career politician contrasted not just with himself, half Biden’s age, but with Trump who, while almost spent most of his career in real estate and show business. Vance repeated it twice more. He concluded the segment with an assertion that oversimplified the facts but landed neatly with the audience:

somehow, a real estate developer from New York City by the name of Donald J. Trump was right on all of these issues while Biden was wrong. 

When Mike Pence (remember him?) gave his acceptance speech on the Trump ticket in 2016 he had to calm Republicans unsettled by a Trump clash with Ted Cruz. Pence cut the tension with humor. In 2020, Pence had to defend Trump’s record on the pandemic and the George Floyd murder, which he did, shakily, from Fort McHenry in Baltimore.

In 2024 JD Vance did not encounter such troubles. He did a brilliant job of dealing with an easier situation.