J.D. Vance - Why him?
He may be the Horace Greeley for our Century
The selection of the junior Senator from Ohio, J.D. Vance, as Donald Trump’s running mate could be a momentous turning point in American politics, noted in history books a hundred years from now.
Vance, with only two years in elected office, was the Times Best-Selling author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” a biography translated into film by noted Director Ron Howard. In the book Vance advances a world view as impactful as another writer-turned-politician from the 19th century, Horace Greeley.
Greeley was a Whig who, as Editor of the New York Tribune, openly criticized fellow Whigs for missing the point of the party’s conservative, pro-free market stance. He felt Whig ties to northern fabric mills and southern cotton plantations left the party lukewarm on the abolition of slavery
Greeley despised the convenience of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scot decision, editorializing against its “twisted rationale” written to justify slavery as constitutional. He famously declared the court ruling as “carrying the moral weight of a majority vote in any Washington bar.”
He accused both the pro-business Whigs and Andrew Jackson’s big government Democrats of leaving vast swaths of the American people forgotten and without a voice. Some of his indictment was repeated verbatim in Vance’s Republican Convention acceptance speech.
That is why, in 1852, at the ripe age of 41 (Vance himself turns 40 next month), Greeley contrived with Whig leaders from Ripon, Wisconsin, to break away and form a new party. The name of that party, “Republican,” is often credited to Greeley. It’s a historical fact that Greeley’s newspaper played a major role in advertising that name to the public.
The Republican Party is now experiencing a similar demand for transformation. Conservatism is of little value if it improves only the lives of those already rich and already powerful. Greeley and Vance, separated by centuries, were convinced that freedom and self-government, the core of America’s founding “new idea”, take meaning when lifting the quality of life for all Americans.
In a recent podcast New York Times columnist Ezra Klein called Trump’s selection of Vance an unprecedented political calculus. Winning Virginia or Wisconsin argued for selecting Gov. Glenn Youngkin or Sen. Ron Johnson. Vance adds no equivalent geography to Trump’s path to victory.
It is argued Vance may “help” in the midwestern “Rust Belt.” But it is not because Michigan and Pennsylvania love Ohio. Klein suggests it is because Vance, more than any Ivy League expert or cultural icon on the national stage, has taken “the gut instincts and apparent whims of Donald Trump and assembled them into a cohesive political philosophy.” Vance is who gives MAGA an intellectual, moral and principled path forward.
Vance’s “conservatism must benefit the American people” philosophy guides policy on far more than trade, foreign military deployment and border enforcement. It guides everything we expect of government, including education.
Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune editorial of July 20, 1850, 174 years ago this week, delivered a passionate defense of free common public schools:
“Teach the poor Irish laborers now scattered along the lines of our unfinished Canals, Railroads, &c. that they must not send their children to the nearest Common Schools, but keep them at home (or rather straggling about) until they can go to Catholic Schools, or such Schools shall come to them, and you doom thousands on thousands to hopeless, life-long ignorance and relative incapacity.”
Vance, descendant of these very Scots-Irish laborers, may now argue parents should choose between the Free Common or existing Catholic school options, but he still echoes Greeley’s insistence that quality education is what unlocks economic freedom.
Vance credits the GI Bill, allowing him to obtain a college degree, as changing the course of his life.
Robert Pondiscio, author of the book, “How the Other Half Learn,” suggests Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy “should be required reading among those of us in education policy.”
“It reminds us of the roles that institutions play (and fail to play) in the lives of our young people.” Pondiscio notes that, while Vance doesn’t pinpoint solutions, he makes the compelling case that education reform is essential “if the goal is to arrest generational poverty.”
Vance may be young, the first millennial to run on a Presidential ticket. And he represents Ohio, a state pollsters already place in Trump’s column. But his ability to turn “Trumpism” into a thoughtful, revolutionary new template for applying conservatism to solve society’s challenges is invaluable.
It may be the very thing that makes America great once again.
Trent Clark of Soda Springs is President and CEO of Customalting Inc. and has served in the leadership of Idaho business, politics, workforce, and humanities education.