A few months ago, I laid out the case for why it might make sense for JD Vance to defer running for president for four years. Then, as now, I still think he will ultimately run in 2028. But following the midterms, the case for Vance to wait has gotten stronger.
The midterms complicated Vance’s path to the presidency in 2028 in several ways. Most obviously, the midterms represented a significant rebuke of the Trump administration, in which Vance is a central figure. Presidents rarely gain in popularity during their lame duck periods, and so it’s hard to imagine an incumbent vice president winning in an environment in which the president is polling below 40 percent approval.
Perhaps most significantly, in 2028 it will be incredibly difficult for Vance to run as his own man. Vance and Trump clearly have divergent views. While Trump has echoed Vance in saying that the Iran War had a significant political cost, it’s clear that they differ significantly on the merits of the war.
“If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so,” Vance wrote in his post. “Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest.”
Vance obviously thinks it was not worth it.
While Trump said he did not disagree with Vance’s analysis of the politics of the war, he added in an interview with Ross Douthat on “60 Minutes”:
The only thing I wish he would’ve said there, if he felt it, and you’d have to ask him about that, but if you had to do it again, would you do it? You know, he’s part of a decision-making process. And my answer is an emphatic yes because you can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon. I think, historically, this will be a very good decision. Is it a good decision for today and tomorrow? Maybe not. But you know, I have to go with what’s right for our country. If they had a nuclear weapon during my term, I would be excoriated far worse than what’s happened.
Vance clearly wants to be able to run a campaign in which he will say he opposed the Iran War. That he did his best to prevent it. But ultimately he served at the behest of the president and once the decision was made, had to do his best to try and end it while being supportive publicly for the good of the country. But it’s much harder to do that if he’s still the sitting vice-president for the guy who is out there every day saying it was worth it. It’s hard to run a campaign against the hawks and neocons when your own president took actions that even George W. Bush resisted. It’s hard to run when you fundamentally disagree with the most consequential decision made by the administration in which you served. And the entire brand Vance is going for is that he represents a new, younger generation of Republicans, on which opposition to the Iran War is a key component. Vance running in 2028 and touting his private warnings about the Iran War would be like if Joe Biden ran in 2016 against Obamacare. If he said he warned about it, thought it would be an electoral disaster, and President Obama went ahead with it anyway.
Vance running against the signature action of the sitting president would be difficult with anybody being president, but likely more difficult when the president is Trump. It isn’t unusual for sitting vice presidents to stake out their own brand when running their campaigns, and even trying to create some distance from the president. George H.W. Bush did this subtly in 1988 when he spoke of a “kinder, gentler nation” — an effort to make conservatism seem more compassionate than the image it had during the Reagan era. Whereas Ronald Reagan wasn’t going to make an issue or see it as any sort of slight, Trump is more likely to take offense to any Vance efforts to distance himself from Trump.
I also think as a politician, Vance would be much more comfortable running against an incumbent Democrat than running as part of the incumbent administration. His critiques of the American economy, of the hollowing out of rust belt towns, of globalization, of the abandonment of the middle class, would land a lot harder if Democrats were in charge of the economy. One of the most devastating attacks the Trump campaign used against Kamala Harris in 2024 when she would point to problems in the country that she wanted to fix, is that she was already in office for four years and could have fixed them. In 2028, the same would be said about Vance,
No doubt, even with everything, Vance still has to be considered the favorite to take the nomination in 2028 if he runs. When you’re ambitious, it’s hard to give up the chance to be the nominee of one of the two major parties. Waiting four years creates more risk. Republicans could pull off the upset in 2028 and then he’s shut out until at least 2036. Some other governor or senator could emerge. In politics, windows can close quickly. So that’s why it’s still more likely than not that he runs. But if he wants to be able to run as his own man, without having to simultaneously navigate his relationship with Trump, he will need to wait.