J. D. Vance and the Collapse of Dignity
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Every nation has fringe candidates and public spectacles in its political life, but today, the American right celebrates the abandonment of dignity and virtue.
Clowns and Charlatans
Ohio’s U.S. Senate candidates, Tim Ryan and J. D. Vance, held their first debate last night in Cleveland. I wrote last year about why I find Vance so execrable, but my friend Jim Swift, a native Ohioan, argued today that while “Ryan gave a serviceable performance,” he “didn’t beat Vance into the ground, and given how far Ohio has gone in a MAGA direction, that’s what he needed to do.”
One moment, however, struck me. At a rally in Ohio last month, Donald Trump declared, “J. D. is kissing my ass, he wants my support so bad”—while Vance was standing right by the stage. Last night, Ryan slammed Vance for selling his dignity:
I don’t know anybody I grew up with—I don’t know anybody I went to high school with—that would allow somebody to take their dignity like that and then get back up onstage. We need leaders who have courage to take on their own party. And I’ve proven that. And he was called an “ass kisser” by the former president.
I understood Ryan’s exasperation. I’m not from Ohio, but I was raised in a working-class neighborhood. Where I grew up, if you sneered that a man was kissing your ass—and said it to his face —that other fellow might react by knocking you on that particular part of your anatomy. But Vance’s reaction to Trump calling him out as a spineless loser at his own rally was to run up to Trump like a puppy that just got a treat, wagging his tail for another tasty biscuit.
It is possible, even likely, that Vance will gain a Senate seat. But he can never regain his dignity. He doesn’t seem to care—and neither, apparently, do voters.
Americans once expected politicians to carry themselves with a seriousness that indicated their ability and willingness to tackle problems, whether poverty or war, that were too difficult for the rest of us. We elected such people not because we wanted them to be like us but because we hoped that they were better than us: smarter, tougher, and capable of being leaders and role models.
We often failed, and sometimes we even enjoyed electing scoundrels, such as James Traficant and James Michael Curley . Democracies always welcome a certain amount of playacting and mischief as reassurance that our leaders are not too far removed from our own experiences as citizens. And yes, many politicians have used that as cover for their misdeeds. But even some of the most flawed people we elevated to high office at least pretended to be better people, and thus were capable of inspiring us to be a better nation.
Today, we no longer expect or even want our politicians to be better than we are. The new American right, however, has blown past the relatively innocuous populism of the past 40 years and added a fetid cynicism about almost everything related to public life. Not only are the MAGA Republicans seemingly repelled by the idea of voting for someone better than they are; they support candidates who are often manifestly worse people than the average citizen, so that they may slather their fears about their own shortcomings and prejudices under a sludgy and undifferentiated hatred about almost everyone in public office.
These populists not only look past the sins of their candidates but also defend and even celebrate them. Let us leave aside the cult around Trump, which has now reached such levels of weirdness that the specter of Jim Jones is probably pacing about the netherworld in awe. Instead, consider how many people cheer on unhinged cranks such as Marjorie Taylor Greene or allow themselves to be courted by smarmy opportunists such as Vance and Ted Cruz .
This new populism, centered in the modern Republican Party, has no recognizable policy content beyond the thrill of cruelty and a juvenile boorishness meant largely to enrage others. The GOP’s goals now boil down to power for its elected royalty and cheap Colosseum pleasures for its rank and file. Republicans, therefore, are forced to lower their—and our—standards for admission to public office, because the destruction of dignity is the only way they can find the candidates who will do what decent men and women will not, including abasing themselves to Donald Trump.
The same Republicans who claim to venerate the Founders and the Constitution have intentionally turned our politics into a scuzzy burlesque. Last night, Fox News—home to some of the loudest carny barkers on the freak-show midway—played a snippet of a 2018 phone call from Joe Biden to his son Hunter. The message revealed a father’s love and worry; the Fox host Sean Hannity tried to make it seem scandalous. Meanwhile, GOP leaders continue to defend the Georgia candidate Herschel Walker, whose callousness to his own children (and their mothers) is on full display. They ridicule Biden—a decent and good man who was worried that his son was going to die from addiction—and make excuses for Walker, who seemingly forgot about multiple children he’s fathered and has made incoherent responses to charges from the mother of one of those children that he financed an abortion for her. She has also said that he later asked her to undergo a second abortion ; Walker continues to deny all of these claims.
I’m an adult. I get it. Our elected officials aren’t saints, and only rarely are they heroes. But must they now be a cavalcade of clowns and charlatans, joyously parading their embrace of vice and their rejection of virtue? The Republican Party seems to think so.
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Disciples are an unattractive bunch ... just ask Mary.
James Michael Curley ... an 'interesting' forerunner.
Without a doubt.
Vance is all of those and spineless.
That is hilarious. It would be even more hilarious if it wasnt so disturbing.
Shameless lying and self promotion parroting right wing talking points and not an ounce of shame. I really hope Tim Ryan can pull a win for Ohio.