JD Vance's Gamble for Resurrection
Well what do you know, Vance is looking at public opinion polls.
In 2022, the political consensus was that Kamala Harris had botched her first 18 months as Vice President, through a combination of poor staffing, media own-goals, and constantly being tasked with the Biden administration’s crappiest policy assignments.
Fast-forward four years, and it’s hard not to arrive at similar conclusions for Vice President JD Vance.
No doubt, Vance’s team has been much better at leaking to the press about his doubts regarding unpopular Trump actions. Still, it hasn’t been a great year and a half for him. His book tour has not gone well. He’s been stuck cheerleading for unpopular military actions that flatly contradict his 2024 campaign pledges. He keeps campaigning for losers like Viktor Orban and picking fights with popular figures like (checks notes) the Pope. He can’t even hold a football championship trophy without fumbling it. And Trump has openly mused about Vance’s political fortunes relative to Marco Rubio, all the while throwing Vance under the bus in public and in private.1
To couch this properly: relative to January 2025, JD Vance, like Kamala Harris before him, is operating in the domain of political loss. And it seems like Vance has decided to gamble for resurrection by taking ownership of the strategic defeat Iran cease-fire. This includes a politically interesting side dish: going hard after Israel.
As Politico’s Megan Messerly, Myah Ward, and Diana Nerozzi report:
It is one of the highest-stakes gambles of his political career.
Vance is generating a robust trail of media content as part of his peace agreement tour — cable news appearances, an on-camera briefing at the White House on Thursday and possible photos of the vice president with Iranian negotiators, such as Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, at a mountain resort overlooking Lake Lucerne.
If things go well this weekend and in the weeks to follow, Vance will have played a key role in brokering a peace that could lead to an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions and clears the way for the economy to quickly rebound. But if things go poorly, Vance, a presumed top contender for the 2028 nomination, will have defended an unpopular war and been the public face of a short-lived peace.
Politico’s Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns explain the Vance team’s thinking:
“Without question, the biggest potential political liability Vance had was the unpopularity of the war in Iran,” one person close to the White House who supports the deal told Dasha last night. “So it’s fascinating to watch his biggest enemies in the GOP unwittingly inoculate him from that liability by branding him as responsible for the peace deal.”
“He now gets to do a media tour defending the president — AKA the kingmaker of our party — from their idiotic criticism of the deal,” the person went on. “While even his critics would acknowledge that the vice president is a smart guy, sometimes what really matters in politics is how stupid your enemies are.”
This position reflects a wider belief within the White House that regardless of the grim detail, cutting a deal with Iran was the savviest political move ahead of the midterms.
Given the details of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, it may well be true that the Iran deal was the savviest political move ahead of the midterms. The thing is, that’s like applauding a doctor who ignores a gangrenous limb for so long that the best remaining option is an amputation.
Vance’s team might be able to defend this as the best short-term move, but that requires continued progress in the negotiations so Iran not start charging tolls two months from now. And no matter how hard Vance and Trump try to sell this outcome, it’s far inferior to Obama’s Iran deal from a decade ago, a fact that will drive this White House absolutely nuts.
Today, however, Vance upped the ante in his defense of the Iran deal by not only criticizing domestic critics of the Iran deal, but going after the country that joined in Operation Epic Fury: Israel.
Vance was defending Trump in response to multiple reports about both Netanyahu and his Israeli supporters who are absolutely infuriated that Trump turned on them the way he turns on everyone not named “Vladimir Putin.”
I have said multiple times over the past year that if only Nixon can go to China, then only Trump can screw over Netanyahu. The question is — does this extend to JD Vance as well?
