Much has been said in the last week about Donald Trump’s bold choice of running mate, including by me, who believes J.D. Vance’s life story and unique understanding of white working-class issues is a shocking development that could turn the tide in battleground states.
But when it comes to national politics, the vice presidential candidate isn’t the only member of the Vance family who is potentially formidable.
First Lady nominee Usha Chirukuri Vance brings just as fresh a perspective as her husband and, perhaps more importantly, provides a striking contrast to the bland and easily forgettable next lady (pandering Mrs. Biden aside, she won’t be a problem for the American people for much longer).
Doug Emhoff has been thrust upon the public for five years as a political aide and surrogate for the Biden-Harris campaign, with a microphone shoved in his face at dozens of events, and in all that time he has yet to make a memorable statement, much less one that responded to everyday people’s lives.
Usha Vance? She represents a real opportunity for change, especially if the Trump campaign gives her a platform to speak out and deviate from the same tired script that seems to plague the spouses of the current president and vice president.
At Trump and Vance’s first rally on Saturday in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the vice presidential nominee delivered some attacks on Kamala Harris, but he also exuded an air of humility and “I can’t believe I’m here.”
But the most interesting line J.D. Vance delivered wasn’t about Harris having been a government employee for decades, or even about his Mamaw, but a casual remark about Usha.
“My wife doesn’t really care about politics. She thinks the whole thing is corrupt, and I think she’s probably right,” the vice presidential candidate said in a candid off-script speech.
“I’m not a very political guy” stands in stark contrast to Emhoff, who has dropped his friendly mask and delivered boilerplate Democratic talking points like a walking chatterbox GPT inspired to attack J.D. Vance.
“Look at the guy he picked. An extremist. An opportunist. Someone who doesn’t want to make exceptions for abortion. Even for incest and rape. That’s J.D. Vance. So we already know what it was like the first time. He didn’t care about us, we have a terrible economy, incompetence, COVID-19, riots and now we have Project 2025. That’s their agenda,” he said in Arizona over the weekend.
Usha Vance doesn’t have to go down either path.
Indeed, the best she could do as the Republican candidate would be to humanize him and tell the story her husband told her in Grand Rapids: that despite her legitimate doubts about the political process, she supported his reform-making role as vice president, a future that was unimaginable for a boy from a troubled, dysfunctional home growing up in Middletown, Ohio.
Politics is an inherently corrupt business and many people who enter the game with the intention of cleaning it up end up getting caught up in compromise. Usha Vance is someone who can show that it doesn’t have to be that way, and that it certainly isn’t for her husband.
But it all depends on whether the next First Lady and the Trump campaign realize the impact of that message.
There are signs that this may be the case.
At the Republican National Convention last week, Usha Vance portrayed JD in a way that was very different from the distorted mirror image handed out by the Democratic National Committee.
Perhaps best of all, it had nothing to do with politics, but the man she fell in love with: “a working-class guy who overcame childhood trauma I could never understand to get to Yale Law School; a tough Marine who served in Iraq, but who also enjoyed playing with puppies and watching the movies Babe.”
We need more of this in the Trump-Vance campaign, and in American politics as well.
So, here’s a piece of advice: let Usha be Usha.
It’s a winning strategy.
And it could prove transformative in a presidential election thrown into chaos by Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw.
