The Chosen One › American Greatness

I think it was 2019 when I first connected with Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio). I had just finished my legal internship and was starting my career in media. J.D., only a few years older than me, was already a bestselling author and a tech venture capitalist. We were both interested in some of the energetic and emerging elements of the Trump-era right and followed each other accordingly on social media. We messaged about meeting on the sidelines of the first-ever National Conservatism Conference (“NatCon 1”), held in Washington, D.C., in July 2019. I don’t think we actually met during the riot, but J.D. gave a memorable speech.

We’ve stayed in touch ever since. He published two op-eds for Newsweek during my tenure as op-ed editor. We’ve remained active in national conservatism, both speaking at last week’s NatCon conference (“NatCon 4”). We’re co-founders of the advisory board of American Moment, which seeks to “identify, educate, and establish credibility” among young New Right leaders. We’ve both been active in American Compass, a think tank that seeks to reorient conservative economics away from doctrinaire liberalism. We’re both speaking at the Restoring a Nation Conference in Steubenville, Ohio, in October 2022. We had dinner before his keynote speech, during which we nerded out about government policy. Like a true American, JD drank two Miller Lites.

We’ve also walked a similar path when it comes to former President Donald Trump. JD and I were both critical of Trump during the 2016 election, but we quickly pivoted when we saw what great things he had accomplished in a short time. We became outspoken advocates of a more pragmatic, agile, and dynamic right, one that rejects the dog-eared manual of the past and prefers cautious statesmanship over blindly following abstract dogma. We’ve been influenced by many of the same people, and we count some of the same people as friends.

It’s a little surreal to see a friend of mine crowned the vice presidential nominee of a major party. But JD isn’t just a spokesman for our particular corner of the American right. Rather, he’s an authentic voice for the tens of millions of forgotten Americans who have been sold out to globalism and left in the dust by neoliberalism’s “free movement” of goods, labor, and capital. (Anyone who thinks neoliberalism has been “free” should take a walk around a city like Steubenville.) And he’s the best possible voice for frustrated Millennials and Gen Zers who have inherited a country after decades of baby boomer malfeasance, where the social fabric has been torn apart and the American dream of upward economic mobility is all but dead.

Our current predicament may seem dire, but JD was made for this moment. From the motley crew of brethren of the new American right, vice presidential candidate JD Vance has emerged as the chosen one, the one who can uniquely give voice to an entire disaffected generation or two and permanently transform America’s cultural and political landscape.

Trump would be wise to give JD an outsized role on the campaign trail and an even more outsized role in the presidential administration to come. In JD, he will find someone who is not only a talented communicator with an inspiring personal biography. He will also find someone who is deeply thoughtful and has his finger on the pulse of America’s economic and cultural ills — and, perhaps most important, a keen sense of what public policy can actually do to tangibly improve the daily lives of Americans.

Vice President J.D. Vance will help advance a trade agenda and economic strategy that meaningfully prioritizes the interests of places like Steubenville, not Wall Street. He will pursue policies that enable others to rise through the economic ranks and live their own American dreams, just as he did. He will pursue a realistic foreign policy that views every geopolitical issue and global hotspot through the prism of the American national interest and the American way of life.

Ultimately, as the now clear heir apparent in a post-Trump Republican Party, J.D. Vance will have a unique opportunity to effect transformative change in American political life by cutting across arbitrary old political lines and building an enduring, generational coalition of the broader center. Just as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and the neoliberal “Washington consensus” after the Berlin Wall helped define the parameters of “consensus” in American political life in their own time, so too can J.D. Vance’s Republican Party—and the broader movement he will soon lead—usher in a new American era of cultural restoration, civilizational health, and material prosperity.

JD Vance is only 39 years old. He has been Trump’s vice presidential nominee for less than a week. But lowering the bar would be a disservice to his enormous talent.

To learn more about Josh Hammer and read articles by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.