JD Vance may be president. Is he even qualified?

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com

Donald Trump’s selection of Sen. J.D. (James David) Vance, a Cincinnati Republican and Middletown native, to be his vice-presidential running mate up-shifted Democrats’ Talking Points Machine into overdrive.

True, whoever is nominated for vice president, and wins, whether it’s Vance or Vice President Kamala Harris (assuming Democrats’ ticket remains as-is) could succeed midterm to the presidency, given Trump’s age (78) and Democratic incumbent Joe Biden’s (81, turning 82 after November’s election).

True also, Vance — to a point —has demonstrated chameleon-like politics, his earlier denunciations of Trump supplanted by Vance’s seemingly slavish support for him – opportunism of a very high order. (That said, opportunism is an 11-letter word for “American politics.”)

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Still, it appears, albeit at a distance, that there’s an ideological core to Vance’s politics, a movement called “national conservatism,” as cleveland.com’s Andrew Tobias reported from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

“National conservatism” is hard to define but, to cite one facet, appears to be deeply skeptical, if not generally opposed, to so-called free trade deals, which in practice have cost America, especially the industrial Midwest (e.g., northeast Ohio and the Miami Valley) well-paying manufacturing jobs.

In 2021, a year before Ohioans sent Vance to the Senate, the Monthly Labor Review reported on manufacturing jobs in the Midwest from 1990 to 2019.

The journal found that “The greatest decline in manufacturing employment as a percentage of total nonfarm employment occurred in Ohio. In 1990, manufacturing accounted for roughly 21.7 percent of all employment in [Ohio]. In 2019, manufacturing accounted for 12.5 percent of all jobs in Ohio, after the industry shed roughly 359,000 jobs.”

Be it noted that the slump in good pay-and-benefits jobs occurred during three GOP presidencies (G.H.W. Bush; G.W. Bush; D.J. Trump) and two Democratic presidencies (W.J. Clinton; B.H. Obama). Is it any wonder why both parties habitually try to distract voters from focusing on those brutal facts by stirring up so-called social issues?

Vance is overrated politically

Barring the unforeseeable, Donald Trump will carry Ohio regardless of his running mate. Vance’s real utility for the GOP will be campaigning in states where Trump and Biden (or a Biden replacement) are competitive, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Biden is faltering.

Maybe that’s why Democrats seemed so frantic to immediately unload on Vance, starting with the issue of abortion, access to which Ohio voters guaranteed women last November. Well, as it happens, Vance is Catholic.

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Then there was the fundamentally silly Democratic argument that, yeah, Ohioans elected Vance to the Senate in 2022, but his 53% to 47% margin over the Democratic nominee, then-U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, of suburban Warren, was closer than margins run up by other Ohio GOP candidates that year, such as Gov. Mike DeWine, who drew 62% of the statewide vote to the 37% drawn by Democratic nominee Nan Whaley, once Dayton’s mayor.

Implication: Vance is overrated politically.

Three points: DeWine has been on Ohio’s ballot for one office or another since 1976; Ryan lost in his home county (Trumbull) and in neighboring Mahoning, key parts of Ryan’s congressional district; and Vance may be the first U.S. senator from Ohio (since popular election of U.S. senators began) to have never previously run for any other elected office.

DeWine weighs in from RNC: DeWine: Trump made a great choice in picking JD Vance as vice president.

That is, Vance’s 2022 election was no fluke, albeit lubricated with lavish spending by a campaign fund with ties to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, cleveland.com reported.

Are there inconsistencies in Vance’ record?

You bet, and in Biden’s, too: The New York Times reported in 2019 that Biden, as a U.S. senator from Delaware in the 1970s, “emerged as the Democratic Party’s leading anti-busing crusader — a position that put him in league with Southern segregationists, at odds with liberal Republicans and helped change the dynamic of the Senate [on the issue].”

The central agenda for voters is, or should be, set not by partisan yammering but by whether J.D. Vance or Vice President Harris (assuming Democrats’ ticket doesn’t change) is better qualified to serve as president if Donald Trump or Joe Biden, given their ages, falters — as either one may.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: President JD Vance is a real possibility. Does he have the juice?