Strange Statesmanship: Vance vs. the Creed

Throwback Thursday and Veeply Round-up

Vice President Vance made news, big news (at least to me), this week by challenging the founding principles of the United States of America. We’ll discuss the arguments, but from a Veepology standpoint it is interesting to see the vice president quarterbacking the intellectual project accompanying the presidency.¹

The Claremont Institute, the “nerve center” for MAGA intellectuals, gave Vance its award for statesmanship. In his acceptance speech, the VP spends a lot of time railing against Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic party nominee for mayor of New York. But the core part of his speech is here (this transcript is taken from the YouTube video and the emphasis is added):

It’s a beautiful and wonderful founding vision, but it's not enough by itself. If you think about it, identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let's say, of the Declaration of Independence, that's a definition that is way overinclusive and underinclusive at the same time. What do I mean by that? Well, first of all, it would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree with the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Must we admit all of them tomorrow?

If you follow that logic of America as a purely Creedal nation, America purely as an idea, that is where it would lead you. But at the same time, that answer would also reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. And I happen to think that it's absurd and the modern left seems dedicated to doing this to saying you don't belong in America unless you agree with progressive liberalism in 2025. I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don't belong.

So, I believe one of the most pressing problems for us to face as statesmen is to redefine the meaning of American citizenship in the 21st century. I think we’ve got to do a better job at articulating exactly what that means.

Vance is calling for an intellectual project, but he’s arguing against strawmen. The American Creed is open to all, but it hardly requires the United States to invite everyone in the world to live here. It is instead the first principle both of the case for American independence from Britain and the eventual foundation of an American government. I may not agree, but I am sympathetic to much of the argument about immigration. It has had costs, economic ones, but harder to articulate social costs. None of that requires questioning the American Creed itself, which is one of the best things about the United States (I write a bit about this below for Throwback Thursday.)

The vast majority of American politicians place their policies and views within the Creed. Bernie Sanders would argue that for Americans to exercise their basic rights, the American Creed requires a social welfare system. Barry Goldwater, in the 1960s, argued that unelected bureaucrats were able to restrict the ability of Americans to exercise these basic rights. Different parties and interests in the U.S. may focus on different interpretations of the American Creed or different threats to it. But almost across the spectrum American politics embraces the American Creed.

On that basis a case for more restrictive immigration policies can also be made that the presence of huge numbers of undocumented immigrants is interfering with the sacred rights due Americans. Fair enough. So why is Vance actually attacking the American Creed itself?

Here are a pair of analyses that consider this issue, the latter refers to the former. Vance’s alternative definition focuses on ancestry and shared history rather than shared values as the basis of American identity. It can, darkly, be seen as a “blood and soil” understanding of Americanness.

The second analysis, by the brilliant John Ganz notes (as did I) that Vance specifically refers to the ADL (the Anti-Defamation League), a Jewish community organization that monitors extremist groups and combats anti-Semitism. To me the American Creed is a sacred thing so Vance’s remarks already put me on edge. But Vance specifically calling out a Jewish organization as somehow denying Americans the rights of their citizenship is downright creepy. Anti-Semitism nearly always includes dark conspiracy theories about “cosmopolitan” Jews undermining the nation, the people, das volk.

Jacksonian Rhetoric

The best single article on Trumpism (as opposed to Trump) is Walter Russell Mead’s The Jacksonian Revolt. The Jacksonian trend in U.S. politics, inspired by President Andrew Jackson, are the basic patriots. They aren’t interested in big ideas or foreign affairs. They support their country and appreciate the freedom and equality their U.S. provides. Jacksonians expect leaders to have their back and are looking out for their interests. With the decline of industry, harrowing financial crises the engagement in forever wars, the rise of illegal immigration, and the perception of limits (particularly the right to bear arms), the Jacksonians lost faith in the traditional leaders on both sides of the aisle. For many it appeared that American elites were not merely ignoring the problems of facing Americans but actually making them worse for their own ends. Given all of this, it is little surprise they turned to Trump.

With that, let’s look at some of Vance’s remarks about Mamdani:

Now, the person who wishes to lead our largest city had, according to multiple media reports, never once publicly mentioned America's Independence Day in earnest. But when he did so this year, this is what he said. And this is an actual quote. Quote, "America is beautiful, contradictory, unfinished. I am proud of our country, even as we constantly strive to make it better." End quote. There is no gratitude in those words. No sense of owing something to this land and the people who turned its wilderness into the most powerful nation on earth.

To me, Mamdani’s statement is dead on.

Vance, instead, indulges his fetish for demanding gratitude. Here again, Walter Russell Mead provides insight. As various groups of hyphenated Americans have received acknowledgement for their contributions to building the United States, the largest single group of generically white Americans are left out. In fact the term white-American is deemed offensive to non-whites. White Americans see other groups express pride in their identity and receive benefits for their identity—while being lectured about white privilege and the evils that white people did in building the United States.

For Vance, if the U.S. is so great, why can’t the people who did so much to build it get acknowledged for their efforts and sacrifice. Immigrants like Mamdani should at the least show gratitude for the benefits of being in this nation—which others have built.

There is much to argue with Vance’s statements, but the sentiments have mobilized millions. Donald Trump saw a bunch of people milling around and through intuition and force of personality made it a party. Trump has no interest or aptitude for formalizing the movement. That is Vance’s project, developing an intellectual framework for Trumpism.

Veeps as Intellectuals

The American founding fathers were true intellectuals, but in general politicians are not intellectuals, they are practical people of affairs. Sometimes they really like intellectuals or find them useful. JFK had a real knack for charming intellectuals (and really everyone) and getting them on his side. Intellectuals however, in American politics, are often not particularly helpful allies.

Intellectuals are not necessarily smarter than politicians, technocrats, or other figures. Their brains do different things, the intellectuals try to ask bigger questions like: what kind of society do we want? In terms of mental capacity, implementing and overseeing the complex systems on which our society depends may be far more demanding, but intellectually narrower.

Many of our presidents did not seek to re-order national politics or change our understanding of the American Creed, and thus had no particular need for intellectuals. Those presidents that did, usually drew from a deep well of existing discourse. Reagan articulated and enacted conservative ideas that had been brewing for decades. Lincoln tapped into the broad abolitionist movement—although he turned out to be no slouch as a thinker in his own right. FDR’s vast changes were improvised and he had his Brain Trust for intellectual firepower. The presidents who remade American politics and was his own intellectual was probably Thomas Jefferson (with a strong assist from his Secretary of State and successor James Madison.) A century later Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had brought both an effort to re-order American politics and an intellectual aptitude to define their work (although neither succeeded to the extent of Jefferson.) There were presidents who had (or thought they had) the intellectual aptitude but lacked either the will or moment, such as the Adamses and perhaps Barack Obama.

If there weren’t many presidents who served as the intellectual architect of their program, a vice president as intellectual leader is extremely unlikely. But I’m not sure the J.D. Vance would be the first.

Andrew Jackson (see above) was a major figure in American politics (in living memory he was still revered.) His ascent broke the patrician system in which notables effectively ran the country, replacing it with the party system. His so-called spoils system was, at least in theory, an effort to dislodge elites from government sinecures. Jackson pioneered the use of the veto as an expression of presidential political power. Previous presidents had used the veto when they were concerned that a bill was not Constitutional. Jackson vetoed things because he simply didn’t agree with them. Jackson killed the Bank of the United States, which was a national institution exercising great and unaccountable power. This last was probably not to the good, a well-run central bank might have helped reduce the regular financial crises the U.S. faced throughout the 19^th century. Jackson was a slaveholder and did terrible, including the forced removal of Native American communities. Still, Jackson had a major political project, some of which was born from his instincts and tapped into deep American feelings about power and inequality.

Jackson’s two vice presidents were thoughtful men. Jackson’s first vice president, John Calhoun, wrote thoughtful arguments about the importance of state’s rights and their importance for protecting fundamental liberties. Calhoun of course, was a South Carolina planter and fundamentally these arguments defended slavery and served to help build the intellectual framework supporting that monstrous institution. Calhoun got into a political conflict with Jackson and resigned from the vice presidency, foreshadowing the fate of Vice President Pence.

Calhoun’s successor, Martin van Buren, was also a political thinker. He recognized the need for stable political parties to prevent a national slide into factionalism and regionalism. He saw Jackson as a charismatic figure around whom a political party could be established. Jackson was an active participant in this effort, but van Buren was a political operator par excellence, who built the Democratic Party. This, perhaps, is Vance’s model.

I’ve written in the past about how this decade is a unique time in which deep cycles in American history meet. The other time these cycles met in during the Jacksonian era. There are big picture parallels with today, but these detailed similarities are eerie.

Now, here’s your Throwback Thursday, with some thoughts on the American Creed.

Pursuit of Happiness

• July 5, 2013

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these rights are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Let’s acknowledge that despite their failings, on this one the old white guys got things right! (Trumball’s 1819 painting The Signing of the Declaration of Independence)

Jefferson was unquestionably a great politician. He may not have been a political philosopher of the first order—in politics there is a vast gulf between practice and theory. Of course being a first-rate politician, natural scientist and writer, and a second-rate philosopher, architect, and inventor still puts one solidly in the poly-math club.

The basic ideas of the Declaration of Independence were cribbed from Locke, who wrote:

Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom, and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world hath by nature a power, not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty, and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men; but to judge of, and punish the breaches of the law in others…

A political philosopher must be precise and define terms carefully. A politician has the freedom to paint with a broad-brush and inspire the polity. Where Locke is precise, Jefferson is elegant. But I am most struck by the shift from estate to happiness. Perhaps is was merely an inspirational turn of phrase, but its impact is profound.

Jefferson himself was a man of property, but with little interest in it – except as a means to support his research and writing. It makes me think of Aristotle who, in The Nicomachean Ethics an exploration of character, goodness, and happiness writes:

Every art and every investigation, and similarly every action and pursuit is considered to aim at some good…. If, then, our activities have some end which we want for its own sake, and for the sake of which we want all the other ends – if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for this will involve an infinite progression, so that our aim will be pointless and ineffectual) – it is clear that this must be the Good, that is the supreme good.

Aristotle dismisses money as this ultimate end:

As for the life of the business man, it does not give him much freedom of action. Besides, wealth is obviously not the good that we are seeking, because it serves only as a means; i.e. for getting something else.

Jefferson evolves Locke’s framework and inserts it into our political DNA. We do not merely have a government to protect our property. Property, particularly Locke’s “estate” is the necessary means. But Jefferson wants to inspire us to seek our end, to pursue happiness.

There are no promises that we can be happy, but rather that this is the point of the whole exercise. To quote another great American, Yaakov Smirnov, “What a country!”

It is fair to say that the United States, like every nation, is founded upon piles of bones. We have a government that, at times, has systematically prevented individuals from the pursuit of happiness in a profound way. But on July 4 we also recall the words of Lincoln, a match for Jefferson as a writer and politician, and his tremendous efforts to set right that great injustice.

But that will have to be a post for another time. I have some happiness to pursue.

1. There is other VP news out there. The trial of the VP in the Philippines continues. The AI fake of Marco Rubio is interesting, eventually they’ll do Vice Presidents. I think nations should sign on to treaties agreeing not to make deepfakes of one another’s leaders. Once that gets started, where would it stop and every nation in the world is vulnerable.