J.D. Vance
Wednesday was J.D. Vance night at the Republican National Convention. His acceptance speech was a powerful introduction to a common young man with uncommon abilities.
I first “met” Vance in 2016 when one of my pals, a Democrat, (not that it matters) told me I had to read “Hillbilly Elegy, A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.”
She said she couldn’t put it down. Neither could I.
J.D. Vance’s unblinking account of what most of us would consider a desperately unhappy and deprived childhood was, at its heart, a story of love, hard work and the life-changing effect of having just one person who genuinely cares about you in your life. Even if that person is your fierce hillbilly grandmother who never graduated from high school and who once doused your grandfather with gasoline and set him on fire when he went out carousing after he’d promised to behave himself.
From the time he was a toddler Vance was an eyewitness to his mother’s addictions, serial boyfriends and domestic abuse. She was in the audience last night.
“Ten years sober,” Vance said proudly as his mom waved to the crowd.
His parents let him down, but his grandmother picked him up. She made him go to school, got him a library card, took him to church and brought him back to the clan living in a Kentucky holler every summer.
Despite having an absent father, an addicted mother and living in poverty in the rust belt of southern Ohio, Vance escaped the plight of most of his contemporaries, because one person set expectations for him.
With the publication of his bestseller, “hillbilly” lost its pejorative meaning. Vance is proud of his people that lived and died in those Kentucky hills.
Vance understands America’s underclass. He knows what happened to America’s heartland when manufacturing jobs went overseas and when the country was flooded with cheap, inferior Chinese steel and other products. He knows what will happen to America’s auto industry if the climate crazies are successful in foisting electric cars on unwilling consumers and they kill the combustion engine and the good jobs that are needed to make American cars.
Vance grew up among people without hope. His neighbors were poor, chronically unemployed once their factories closed, uneducated and caught in sticky webs of drug abuse and hopelessness.
His success is atypical of those who grow up in Appalachia. But he hasn’t forgotten the folks who struggle and who are suffering more than most under Biden’s inflationary policies.
Vance pledged in his acceptance speech that he’d “never forget where I came from.” If you read his book you know he means it.
After high school Vance joined the Marine Corps. Using the GI Bill he attended Ohio State and in just two years he graduated with summa cum laude honors.
From there Vance achieved what seemed improbable if not impossible: he got into Yale Law School.
Vance accomplished all this while his mother was addicted to heroin.
He met his wife, Usha, a Yale classmate, they married, she clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts and he went into business. When Vance was just 31 he wrote his bestseller, a book that aimed to explain America’s Appalachian culture to the rest of the country.
In a country tired of old men, J.D. Vance at 39 represents the next generation of American leaders.
His experiences are not their experiences.
Frankly, Vance is a refreshing Republican. A genuine conservative populist. With Vance there isn’t a whiff of the stuffy Rockefeller, country club or chamber of commerce Republicans. That party is gone. He’s part of the new right and he clearly articulates his political philosophy.
While the Dems will try to use it against him, his history as a former Never Trumper may play to the vice presidential hopeful’s advantage. Like many converts, he’s now a true believer in most of Trump’s policies because he saw them work last time Trump was in the White House.
If this eloquent politician talks about his change of heart to the nation, he could help Trump win over independents and even bring some GOP defectors back to the party.
The left is trying to brand Vance as a radical. He isn’t. He is, however, a man with an extraordinary story to tell.
Four years of Biden and Harris with their open borders, reckless foreign relations, and inflationary policies have ravaged parts of the country. Like those in their elite Hollywood circle of friends and supporters, Biden and Harris are out of touch with everyday Americans. Vance knows the folks who can no longer afford groceries and who are the ones who inevitably send their children off to fight America’s wars. He knows that the answer to poverty isn’t more government handouts, but a thriving economy with good jobs.
Trump clearly believes it’s time to bring in a Marine to help him bring back peace and restore the economy.
Looks like he tapped the right one.
