I see the media are deeply concerned as to his state of health and are already hinting that he’s got one foot in the grave. Strange that they always thought Dopey Joe was just rootin’ tootin’ and not a senile old crook. Perhaps it was MTK meeting him and describing the old vegetable as “sharp as a tack”?
Yeah. I wonder how much Biden’s handlers paid the Ukrainian Fondler for that quote?
Grikath
15 days ago
It’s an interesting test to see if sympathetic magic actually works…
Judging from comments on articles about Trump’s current health I get the impression that hordes of Progressive™s are burning effigies, pinning voodoo dolls, and perform all arts of curses to just try to wish Trump into the grave…
And failing spectacularly so far…
Some of them may burst a vessel soon though, judging from the vitriol….
Bloke in North Dorset
15 days ago
It’s odd that progressives are keen to get Vance in to the White House, but then I’ve never really understood them.
I wonder who Vance would pick as his VP? Possibly someone who would really rile the left or are the banking on controlling the Senate and imposing a Rhino or even Dem on him? Personally I’d go for Rubio who is turning out to be an excellent Secretary of State.
A Vance/Rubio political alliance would be a good outcome for the Republicans as they are both strong players and deep thinkers. Don’t think Vance has what it takes to ride the populist wave though, his instincts and knack for communication seem a long way behind Trump’s. At any rate, such an alliance seems unlikely – the two are reputedly at loggerheads over what, in the long run, making America great again really means.
From reports it seems the only way Vance gets in to the WH is if Trump has to step aside early. Trump is being coy about who he will endorse and there’s been the odd rumour that Trump regrets appoint Vance as VP because of his lack of full support for the attacks on Iran.
Rubio’s stock went up when the Venezuela raid went well and he also appears to be steering policy on Cuba and staying clear of Iran as much as possible.
Still, there’s a lot of water to go under a lot of bridges before the Republicans have to get round to nominating a candidate.
As an aside, the Specie has done a long article and podcast on Usha Vance and she’s being touted as the political strategist behind her husband and the more thoughtful of the two. Perhaps she’s the ambitious one and will start pushing him in a different direction to get the nominations.
Yes that’s possible. Vance has a great backstory, but he’s told it already and anyone who didn’t get on board with it the first time won’t be swayed by it now. What he doesn’t seem to have developed during his brush with power is any recognisable gain in charisma. I do think that’s partly a skill that can be learned, it can look innate but that’s part of the trick of it. (You do see a few politicians who grow in confidence over time, you certainly see some people that do a lot of work in front of live audiences become more charismatic – singers, stand ups etc often unrecognisably so compared to their early days.)
Instead Vance picks intellectual disputes with journalists on X. Something you’d never see Trump falling into the mistake of doing – or even Biden, Harris, etc. Leaves people with the impression “shouldn’t this guy be busy veeping?” But perhaps he’s realised just how limited a role that is when substantial tasks aren’t getting delegated to you.
What he doesn’t seem to have developed during his brush with power is any recognisable gain in charisma
I think his understated, but eloquent and reasonable approach to debate might be his secret weapon.
Love Trump, but I’m sure his Noo Yawk crassness and relentless bluster is a little one-note at times for even Mrs Trump. Different cadences are refreshing, as long as it’s not more of the pretty, focus group tested lies and worn-out establishment cliches that made Trump’s direct style and entertaining braggadocio successful in the first place.
Vance is a Gen X or Millennial or something, isn’t he? He talks softly, but carries a razor sharp rhetorical misericord. He’s a clever man, you can tell by how he handles disagreement. Trump uses words like a blunderbuss, with a similar delivery. Vance chooses his words more carefully, but American liberals were surprised when they saw Vance debate Waltz and didn’t find themselves hating Vance. And it’s not because Vance panders to them, far from it, it’s because his calm, respectful, high IQ professional type of discourse is disarming. Shades of Margaret Thatcher in the late 70’s (she was less imperious and more overtly charmingly erudite in them days, before having to deal with idiot MPs for all those years).
If Trump is Ozzy Osbourne, out there chewing bats and raising hell, Vance would be Ed Sheeran or something. Ed Sheeran doesn’t look like he’d trash a hotel room, he looks like he’d make the bed and leave a tip for the cleaner. He’s not the biggest personality in music. But people like Ed Sheeran.
In terms of intellect and debate, he does remind me of 1970s UK politics – Thatcher certainly, but if you watch any political interview shows from those times, you can see there were a lot of smart cookies about. Style has moved on now though. Everyone needs soundbites – at first because you only got that one clip on the news, nowadays because you need it to go viral on the socials.
Vance sometimes drops stuff that goes down a clanger with younger people, ie anyone under 40 really, particularly those with a more mainstream cultural upbringing. And that’s unfortunately the only bit that’s really memeable.
His response to a lot of modernity is to shy away from it, like his embrace of traditional Catholicism. I think deep down he has a RETVRN sort of mindset. I don’t wanna knock it. In many ways that’s my kinda guy, more than Trump is. But I’m also acutely aware I’m outvoted and becoming demographically irrelevant, and much as I love my neo-tradcath brethren, their numbers are just too small to make a difference.
Like him or loathe him, Trump has a capacity to remake political language, master social media, and bring wild ideas into the political mainstream. Trump seems totally comfortable with mainstream America and its popular culture, no matter how much he’s enjoyed giving the political system some (probably insufficient) shock therapy.
Vance comes across as a cringe intellectual weirdo, or pseudo-intellectual if you’re being harsh and/or think proper clever people all need to think and sound like their leftoid professors. He just doesn’t seem comfortable with modern America at all. That’s not just intellectualism, it’s also because there are many varieties of The American Experience and he fought his way out from a particularly distinctive and unpleasant subculture. Weirdly Trump’s upbringing, elite as it was, seem to have brought him in touch more with the “universal” (disclaimer: not truly universal) aspects of American life and culture.
I think Vance also recognises that Trump’s solutions have not gone nearly far enough and needed more effective professional delivery to make the kind of difference that was envisaged. Which should be a good thing, but I doubt he’d serve someone else as the details guy Veep whose job is to organise implementation. Had enough of that, surely. Yet if he’s running as number one, I think that’ll count against him. Too easy to pigeonhole himself as the nerdy debate team captain who keeps rabbiting on about radical policies most Americans either still aren’t ready for or find it hard to get fired up about. Trump had the uncanny ability to either make unthinkable things palatable or keep the details vague and distract media attention to something else entirely, whereas Vance will shoot his own feet by actually debating the points.
Which, again, he should get the credit for. But it won’t stand him in much stead electorally.
Style has moved on now though. Everyone needs soundbites – at first because you only got that one clip on the news, nowadays because you need it to go viral on the socials.
Also people in the 70’s were willing to listen to other adults calmly discussing opinions, without mugging for the camera doing “get a load of this guy” silly faces, or theatrical gasping, or clapping like seals when someone reflects their own opinions back to them. Usually over a cigarette, in the 70’s. The decline of smoking and hats correlates with the decline of serious adults.
But I’m also acutely aware I’m outvoted and becoming demographically irrelevant, and much as I love my neo-tradcath brethren, their numbers are just too small to make a difference.
Jesus only needed twelve friends.
Weirdly Trump’s upbringing, elite as it was, seem to have brought him in touch more with the “universal” (disclaimer: not truly universal) aspects of American life and culture.
Trump is the WWF wrestling president, NTTAWWT. A vulgar, but big hearted billionaire with the common touch. He is a McDonald’s eating, Diet Coke sipping enjoyer of Shark Week. He has the carnie hucksterism of Barnum or Jobs but an undeniable knack for emotionally reaching his people most of the time. He is a man who embodies much of the soul of America, the can-do, fuck you spirit of a nation that turned a dingy, swampy little island in New York into the financial and cultural centre of the world, adorned with handsome broad streets and elegant Art Deco skyscrapers.
But not every political leader can be an avatar of his people. Nixon had the common touch, hence his landslide. Gerard Ford was a goober. Jimmy Carter was a lovable loser who came over like an exasperated geography teacher who can’t control a class. Ronald Regan was an uncommonly charismatic and confident communicator, who was already considered horribly old before being elected prez. Obama, imo, was stiff as a board and often pissy and passive aggressive instead of charming. His “black guy who overly enunciates words to tell you he’s smart” schtick still fools a lot of libs who also ignore the accent Obama puts on talking to black audiences. But nothing in his record suggests he was more than a weak scholar, a midwit who can read a teleprompter. Anyway,
Vance might get his chance because, just as not every actor needs to be Jason Statham, Michael Cera is ok too, with the right presentation advice and grinding down his weird spergy side, I think voters will take to Vance again. He already got elected to Congress. He should show his beautiful family more, it makes him more relatable as slightly nerdy but proud Dad and loving husband. His wife, by all accounts, is a smart woman and their kids are adorable. And, as a multiracial and multicultural family, they’re certainly not alien to the modern American experience. A lot of Republican voters are from non-Anglo heritage. Dad Vance is a vote winner, he needs a good team of Message flaks to keep him on the side of cool guy stuff, and not weird Ted Cruz at his painfully Cruziest stuff.
Also, JD had a sense of humour about the memes, and dressed up as his ridiculous meme self for Halloween. Hard to imagine Trump doing the same.
Even Multiracial Dad Vance gets accused (and not just by fringe leftoid creatures, it’s quite a mainstream complaint) of being a white supremacist. So he definitely needs some work done to sort out his image, and pronto given the time in the cycle.
Controversial opinion incoming: Usha should have a crack at electoral politics. She’s got the brains. She was born in California so she doesn’t have the Arnie problem. She’s got the looks. Though I don’t know how well her ideals are actually matched to JD’s, there are certainly things she can say and get away with that JD cannot. It’s less ridiculous than the Michelle Obama For President talk.
Reply to Anon
Totally pissed off by your suggestion that the pseudo-intellectuals are right-wing. I met scores of pseudos (when I was a teenager we shortened the word from from pseudo-intellectual to “pseudo”). I do not remember, neither at school, nor at Oxford, nor in my subsequent profession a right-wing pseudo-intellectual.
I never said any such thing, so don’t get worked up about it. The general thrust of my point was that one man’s intellectual is another man’s pseud, depending on how harsh the onlooker’s judgment is, and therefore a risk of trying to appear intellectual is you can come across (at least to some proportion of the audience) as a pseud. It’s the flip side to the risk you take by presenting yourself as a “man of action” and a critical onlooker thinks “intellectually vapid and idiotic”.
The particular problem for Vance (and I was specifically commenting about him, not “the Right” or “conservatives” in general) is the way he argues, even the way he frames his arguments, in quite an old-fashioned way. You can tell he’s read a lot of centuries old Catholic theological works, 19th century philosophers etc. I’m not doubting his brainpower or his depth of study. A lot of people judge what they deem to be a “proper” intellectual by the standards they encountered in academia, and I’m afraid the days of Buckley or Scruton or your old profs are a long time gone. The last two – at least – generations of university graduates encountered a very particular style and language of academic debate. One I find utterly bloody tedious and performative, but it’s what you’ll find in modern higher education and its publications, and beyond that in a lot of books, documentaries, debates, workshops, etc outside the academy. Littered with keywords like “marginalised”, “equity”, “patriarchy”, “minoritized”, “trauma”, “violence”, “oppression”, “lived experience”, “deconstructing”, “unpacking”, “decolonizining” etc but it runs deeper than the vocabulary into the whole way these people see the world and construct their arguments.
Vance’s whole style is quite alien unless you’re an older person or have spent time in the right-wing blogosphere and its social media era descendants. And if it’s not how a “proper academic” would argue then it risks looking pseudo-intellectual even if it’s a serious, well-researched argument presented in good faith.
And fwiw, there definitely are left wing, centrist and right wing pseudo-intellectuals and grifters. It only takes a passing familiarity with the various ecosystems and echo chambers they inhabit to be aware of that – the blogosphere, substack, X, bluesky (bleurgh), tumblr (bleurrrrrrrrrggggghhhh) YouTube, Rumble etc. Don’t tell me there are no right-wing ones unless you’ve had a good look round the depths of X and Rumble and Substack.
I don’t look around the depths of X or Rumble or Substack (I do not even know what “Rumble” is). At my age I don’t want to waste time on junk that I don’t care about
Trump is a one-off. His personality, strengths, and weaknesses, are all the products of a very specific time and place, and no potential successor will have had the same experience. There’s an interesting take on that here: https://markatwood.substack.com/p/the-apprenticeship
His bombastic style succeeded because it suited a particular moment in American politics, but the style of every successful politician eventually begins to grate when people get tired of seeing and hearing it on the news every day for years.
So, if Vance has a distinctly different manner then that will be to his advantage.
Interesting that he also describes the stage presence in comparison to a stand-up comedian. There’s a similar piece on the (more deliberate and focused) training that Vance has apparently has too – tbh all modern politicians go through some kind of media training so this is not a totally new observation. I’m not sure whether Vance has reached his performance ceiling or not. He could do with letting go a bit, as Steve says. Drop some of the seriousness and the feeling that every debating point needs to be fought and won at all costs. https://markatwood.substack.com/p/the-prototype
“Vance is a Gen X or Millennial or something, isn’t he?”
Vance was born 1984 (I looked it up), so he’s firmly millennial. That fits with his obsession with demonstrating a ‘prolier-then-thou’ background, and with using the right words (as you say, “Vance chooses his words more carefully”), although coming at that from the right rather than the more stereotypical PC-obsessed Millennial left.
There’s basically a 12-year gap in politics between the late boomers (Starmer, Boris, Farage) and the early Millennials (Badenoch, Jenrick, Streeting, Rayner). Almost no Gen-X politicians (except from right at either end of the date range), other than a few weirdo obsessives (Osborne, Sturgeon, Truss, Miliband). Yes, there’s Burnham, but he only became successful by giving up on serious politics and doing basic, pragmatic stuff in Manchester.
Similar in the States; there’s a gap between the Obama, Palin, Harris early 1960s lot, and the Vance, Kennedy III, Hegseth, AOC bunch from the 1980s. In between, mostly just a handful of real oddballs (Cruz, Ryan).
There are almost no major politicians born from about 1967 to 1988. That’s a twelve year gap of people who are now mostly in their 50s, so should be in senior positions. In business they are; most FTSE-100 and Fortune-100 CEOs are in that age range; but not politics.
My theory is that anyone whose earliest memories are of the 1970s (stagflation, strikes, decline as an accepted policy) is not going to put any hope in politics.
jgh
15 days ago
Just have to hold off until after January 2027, then Vance gets two whole terms on top.
No-one has used it yet; I think Lyndon Johnson could have done, but didn’t stand.
Steve
15 days ago
Anyway, we already know who’s body he nicked. He’s the morphological spit of Biff Tannen. Trump and Tannen are both 6’2″ with the stereotypical corn-fed “fridge” body type that’s useful in contact sports. It’s a robust body shape that can carry a lot of fat and muscle, so gaining a stone at 79/80 is nbd as long as he doesn’t keep getting fatter. (Not good for the elderly male heart)
“gaining a stone at 79/80 is nbd”
I wish.
I am still stones lighter than Donald Duck but the NHS wants me to jump through a dozen hoops because I have above-“normal” cholesterol.
OTOH I seem to remember that when Xander faced Biff one-to-one and stood up to Biff the latter chickened out and ended up as dog-meat
I see the media are deeply concerned as to his state of health and are already hinting that he’s got one foot in the grave. Strange that they always thought Dopey Joe was just rootin’ tootin’ and not a senile old crook. Perhaps it was MTK meeting him and describing the old vegetable as “sharp as a tack”?
Yeah. I wonder how much Biden’s handlers paid the Ukrainian Fondler for that quote?
It’s an interesting test to see if sympathetic magic actually works…
Judging from comments on articles about Trump’s current health I get the impression that hordes of Progressive™s are burning effigies, pinning voodoo dolls, and perform all arts of curses to just try to wish Trump into the grave…
And failing spectacularly so far…
Some of them may burst a vessel soon though, judging from the vitriol….
It’s odd that progressives are keen to get Vance in to the White House, but then I’ve never really understood them.
I wonder who Vance would pick as his VP? Possibly someone who would really rile the left or are the banking on controlling the Senate and imposing a Rhino or even Dem on him? Personally I’d go for Rubio who is turning out to be an excellent Secretary of State.
A Vance/Rubio political alliance would be a good outcome for the Republicans as they are both strong players and deep thinkers. Don’t think Vance has what it takes to ride the populist wave though, his instincts and knack for communication seem a long way behind Trump’s. At any rate, such an alliance seems unlikely – the two are reputedly at loggerheads over what, in the long run, making America great again really means.
From reports it seems the only way Vance gets in to the WH is if Trump has to step aside early. Trump is being coy about who he will endorse and there’s been the odd rumour that Trump regrets appoint Vance as VP because of his lack of full support for the attacks on Iran.
Rubio’s stock went up when the Venezuela raid went well and he also appears to be steering policy on Cuba and staying clear of Iran as much as possible.
Still, there’s a lot of water to go under a lot of bridges before the Republicans have to get round to nominating a candidate.
As an aside, the Specie has done a long article and podcast on Usha Vance and she’s being touted as the political strategist behind her husband and the more thoughtful of the two. Perhaps she’s the ambitious one and will start pushing him in a different direction to get the nominations.
Yes that’s possible. Vance has a great backstory, but he’s told it already and anyone who didn’t get on board with it the first time won’t be swayed by it now. What he doesn’t seem to have developed during his brush with power is any recognisable gain in charisma. I do think that’s partly a skill that can be learned, it can look innate but that’s part of the trick of it. (You do see a few politicians who grow in confidence over time, you certainly see some people that do a lot of work in front of live audiences become more charismatic – singers, stand ups etc often unrecognisably so compared to their early days.)
Instead Vance picks intellectual disputes with journalists on X. Something you’d never see Trump falling into the mistake of doing – or even Biden, Harris, etc. Leaves people with the impression “shouldn’t this guy be busy veeping?” But perhaps he’s realised just how limited a role that is when substantial tasks aren’t getting delegated to you.
What he doesn’t seem to have developed during his brush with power is any recognisable gain in charisma
I think his understated, but eloquent and reasonable approach to debate might be his secret weapon.
Love Trump, but I’m sure his Noo Yawk crassness and relentless bluster is a little one-note at times for even Mrs Trump. Different cadences are refreshing, as long as it’s not more of the pretty, focus group tested lies and worn-out establishment cliches that made Trump’s direct style and entertaining braggadocio successful in the first place.
Vance is a Gen X or Millennial or something, isn’t he? He talks softly, but carries a razor sharp rhetorical misericord. He’s a clever man, you can tell by how he handles disagreement. Trump uses words like a blunderbuss, with a similar delivery. Vance chooses his words more carefully, but American liberals were surprised when they saw Vance debate Waltz and didn’t find themselves hating Vance. And it’s not because Vance panders to them, far from it, it’s because his calm, respectful, high IQ professional type of discourse is disarming. Shades of Margaret Thatcher in the late 70’s (she was less imperious and more overtly charmingly erudite in them days, before having to deal with idiot MPs for all those years).
If Trump is Ozzy Osbourne, out there chewing bats and raising hell, Vance would be Ed Sheeran or something. Ed Sheeran doesn’t look like he’d trash a hotel room, he looks like he’d make the bed and leave a tip for the cleaner. He’s not the biggest personality in music. But people like Ed Sheeran.
In terms of intellect and debate, he does remind me of 1970s UK politics – Thatcher certainly, but if you watch any political interview shows from those times, you can see there were a lot of smart cookies about. Style has moved on now though. Everyone needs soundbites – at first because you only got that one clip on the news, nowadays because you need it to go viral on the socials.
Vance sometimes drops stuff that goes down a clanger with younger people, ie anyone under 40 really, particularly those with a more mainstream cultural upbringing. And that’s unfortunately the only bit that’s really memeable.
His response to a lot of modernity is to shy away from it, like his embrace of traditional Catholicism. I think deep down he has a RETVRN sort of mindset. I don’t wanna knock it. In many ways that’s my kinda guy, more than Trump is. But I’m also acutely aware I’m outvoted and becoming demographically irrelevant, and much as I love my neo-tradcath brethren, their numbers are just too small to make a difference.
Like him or loathe him, Trump has a capacity to remake political language, master social media, and bring wild ideas into the political mainstream. Trump seems totally comfortable with mainstream America and its popular culture, no matter how much he’s enjoyed giving the political system some (probably insufficient) shock therapy.
Vance comes across as a cringe intellectual weirdo, or pseudo-intellectual if you’re being harsh and/or think proper clever people all need to think and sound like their leftoid professors. He just doesn’t seem comfortable with modern America at all. That’s not just intellectualism, it’s also because there are many varieties of The American Experience and he fought his way out from a particularly distinctive and unpleasant subculture. Weirdly Trump’s upbringing, elite as it was, seem to have brought him in touch more with the “universal” (disclaimer: not truly universal) aspects of American life and culture.
I think Vance also recognises that Trump’s solutions have not gone nearly far enough and needed more effective professional delivery to make the kind of difference that was envisaged. Which should be a good thing, but I doubt he’d serve someone else as the details guy Veep whose job is to organise implementation. Had enough of that, surely. Yet if he’s running as number one, I think that’ll count against him. Too easy to pigeonhole himself as the nerdy debate team captain who keeps rabbiting on about radical policies most Americans either still aren’t ready for or find it hard to get fired up about. Trump had the uncanny ability to either make unthinkable things palatable or keep the details vague and distract media attention to something else entirely, whereas Vance will shoot his own feet by actually debating the points.
Which, again, he should get the credit for. But it won’t stand him in much stead electorally.
Style has moved on now though. Everyone needs soundbites – at first because you only got that one clip on the news, nowadays because you need it to go viral on the socials.
Also people in the 70’s were willing to listen to other adults calmly discussing opinions, without mugging for the camera doing “get a load of this guy” silly faces, or theatrical gasping, or clapping like seals when someone reflects their own opinions back to them. Usually over a cigarette, in the 70’s. The decline of smoking and hats correlates with the decline of serious adults.
But I’m also acutely aware I’m outvoted and becoming demographically irrelevant, and much as I love my neo-tradcath brethren, their numbers are just too small to make a difference.
Jesus only needed twelve friends.
Weirdly Trump’s upbringing, elite as it was, seem to have brought him in touch more with the “universal” (disclaimer: not truly universal) aspects of American life and culture.
Trump is the WWF wrestling president, NTTAWWT. A vulgar, but big hearted billionaire with the common touch. He is a McDonald’s eating, Diet Coke sipping enjoyer of Shark Week. He has the carnie hucksterism of Barnum or Jobs but an undeniable knack for emotionally reaching his people most of the time. He is a man who embodies much of the soul of America, the can-do, fuck you spirit of a nation that turned a dingy, swampy little island in New York into the financial and cultural centre of the world, adorned with handsome broad streets and elegant Art Deco skyscrapers.
But not every political leader can be an avatar of his people. Nixon had the common touch, hence his landslide. Gerard Ford was a goober. Jimmy Carter was a lovable loser who came over like an exasperated geography teacher who can’t control a class. Ronald Regan was an uncommonly charismatic and confident communicator, who was already considered horribly old before being elected prez. Obama, imo, was stiff as a board and often pissy and passive aggressive instead of charming. His “black guy who overly enunciates words to tell you he’s smart” schtick still fools a lot of libs who also ignore the accent Obama puts on talking to black audiences. But nothing in his record suggests he was more than a weak scholar, a midwit who can read a teleprompter. Anyway,
Vance might get his chance because, just as not every actor needs to be Jason Statham, Michael Cera is ok too, with the right presentation advice and grinding down his weird spergy side, I think voters will take to Vance again. He already got elected to Congress. He should show his beautiful family more, it makes him more relatable as slightly nerdy but proud Dad and loving husband. His wife, by all accounts, is a smart woman and their kids are adorable. And, as a multiracial and multicultural family, they’re certainly not alien to the modern American experience. A lot of Republican voters are from non-Anglo heritage. Dad Vance is a vote winner, he needs a good team of Message flaks to keep him on the side of cool guy stuff, and not weird Ted Cruz at his painfully Cruziest stuff.
Also, JD had a sense of humour about the memes, and dressed up as his ridiculous meme self for Halloween. Hard to imagine Trump doing the same.
Even Multiracial Dad Vance gets accused (and not just by fringe leftoid creatures, it’s quite a mainstream complaint) of being a white supremacist. So he definitely needs some work done to sort out his image, and pronto given the time in the cycle.
Controversial opinion incoming: Usha should have a crack at electoral politics. She’s got the brains. She was born in California so she doesn’t have the Arnie problem. She’s got the looks. Though I don’t know how well her ideals are actually matched to JD’s, there are certainly things she can say and get away with that JD cannot. It’s less ridiculous than the Michelle Obama For President talk.
Reply to Anon
Totally pissed off by your suggestion that the pseudo-intellectuals are right-wing. I met scores of pseudos (when I was a teenager we shortened the word from from pseudo-intellectual to “pseudo”). I do not remember, neither at school, nor at Oxford, nor in my subsequent profession a right-wing pseudo-intellectual.
I never said any such thing, so don’t get worked up about it. The general thrust of my point was that one man’s intellectual is another man’s pseud, depending on how harsh the onlooker’s judgment is, and therefore a risk of trying to appear intellectual is you can come across (at least to some proportion of the audience) as a pseud. It’s the flip side to the risk you take by presenting yourself as a “man of action” and a critical onlooker thinks “intellectually vapid and idiotic”.
The particular problem for Vance (and I was specifically commenting about him, not “the Right” or “conservatives” in general) is the way he argues, even the way he frames his arguments, in quite an old-fashioned way. You can tell he’s read a lot of centuries old Catholic theological works, 19th century philosophers etc. I’m not doubting his brainpower or his depth of study. A lot of people judge what they deem to be a “proper” intellectual by the standards they encountered in academia, and I’m afraid the days of Buckley or Scruton or your old profs are a long time gone. The last two – at least – generations of university graduates encountered a very particular style and language of academic debate. One I find utterly bloody tedious and performative, but it’s what you’ll find in modern higher education and its publications, and beyond that in a lot of books, documentaries, debates, workshops, etc outside the academy. Littered with keywords like “marginalised”, “equity”, “patriarchy”, “minoritized”, “trauma”, “violence”, “oppression”, “lived experience”, “deconstructing”, “unpacking”, “decolonizining” etc but it runs deeper than the vocabulary into the whole way these people see the world and construct their arguments.
Vance’s whole style is quite alien unless you’re an older person or have spent time in the right-wing blogosphere and its social media era descendants. And if it’s not how a “proper academic” would argue then it risks looking pseudo-intellectual even if it’s a serious, well-researched argument presented in good faith.
And fwiw, there definitely are left wing, centrist and right wing pseudo-intellectuals and grifters. It only takes a passing familiarity with the various ecosystems and echo chambers they inhabit to be aware of that – the blogosphere, substack, X, bluesky (bleurgh), tumblr (bleurrrrrrrrrggggghhhh) YouTube, Rumble etc. Don’t tell me there are no right-wing ones unless you’ve had a good look round the depths of X and Rumble and Substack.
I don’t look around the depths of X or Rumble or Substack (I do not even know what “Rumble” is). At my age I don’t want to waste time on junk that I don’t care about
Trump is a one-off. His personality, strengths, and weaknesses, are all the products of a very specific time and place, and no potential successor will have had the same experience. There’s an interesting take on that here:
https://markatwood.substack.com/p/the-apprenticeship
His bombastic style succeeded because it suited a particular moment in American politics, but the style of every successful politician eventually begins to grate when people get tired of seeing and hearing it on the news every day for years.
So, if Vance has a distinctly different manner then that will be to his advantage.
Interesting that he also describes the stage presence in comparison to a stand-up comedian. There’s a similar piece on the (more deliberate and focused) training that Vance has apparently has too – tbh all modern politicians go through some kind of media training so this is not a totally new observation. I’m not sure whether Vance has reached his performance ceiling or not. He could do with letting go a bit, as Steve says. Drop some of the seriousness and the feeling that every debating point needs to be fought and won at all costs. https://markatwood.substack.com/p/the-prototype
Steve said:
Vance was born 1984 (I looked it up), so he’s firmly millennial. That fits with his obsession with demonstrating a ‘prolier-then-thou’ background, and with using the right words (as you say, “Vance chooses his words more carefully”), although coming at that from the right rather than the more stereotypical PC-obsessed Millennial left.
There’s basically a 12-year gap in politics between the late boomers (Starmer, Boris, Farage) and the early Millennials (Badenoch, Jenrick, Streeting, Rayner). Almost no Gen-X politicians (except from right at either end of the date range), other than a few weirdo obsessives (Osborne, Sturgeon, Truss, Miliband). Yes, there’s Burnham, but he only became successful by giving up on serious politics and doing basic, pragmatic stuff in Manchester.
Similar in the States; there’s a gap between the Obama, Palin, Harris early 1960s lot, and the Vance, Kennedy III, Hegseth, AOC bunch from the 1980s. In between, mostly just a handful of real oddballs (Cruz, Ryan).
There are almost no major politicians born from about 1967 to 1988. That’s a twelve year gap of people who are now mostly in their 50s, so should be in senior positions. In business they are; most FTSE-100 and Fortune-100 CEOs are in that age range; but not politics.
My theory is that anyone whose earliest memories are of the 1970s (stagflation, strikes, decline as an accepted policy) is not going to put any hope in politics.
Just have to hold off until after January 2027, then Vance gets two whole terms on top.
I’d forgotten about the two year bonus rule.
No-one has used it yet; I think Lyndon Johnson could have done, but didn’t stand.
Anyway, we already know who’s body he nicked. He’s the morphological spit of Biff Tannen. Trump and Tannen are both 6’2″ with the stereotypical corn-fed “fridge” body type that’s useful in contact sports. It’s a robust body shape that can carry a lot of fat and muscle, so gaining a stone at 79/80 is nbd as long as he doesn’t keep getting fatter. (Not good for the elderly male heart)
“gaining a stone at 79/80 is nbd”
I wish.
I am still stones lighter than Donald Duck but the NHS wants me to jump through a dozen hoops because I have above-“normal” cholesterol.
OTOH I seem to remember that when Xander faced Biff one-to-one and stood up to Biff the latter chickened out and ended up as dog-meat