What the Leaks Reveal about the VP
Vance is in the conversation, but not the last person in the room
“Was VP Vance in the group chat?”
That was my immediate reaction to yesterday’s story in The Atlantic that their editor Jeffrey Goldberg had inadvertently been included on a Signal group chat with the administration’s national security team.
My readers are probably not surprised.
Goldberg reports that he had received a contact request on the messaging app Signal from a Michael Waltz, who turned out to be National Security Advisor Michael Waltz. Goldberg was then added to group chat discussing administration plans to attacks Yemen. Goldberg thought this all might be a disinfo op against him. But when the bombing started Goldberg realized it was in fact the real discussion between the national security principals. After the attack, the principals sent each other congratulatory emojis—as one does.
Many, including Goldberg, have discussed this huge operational security failure. I’m more interested in what the leak reveals about administration decision-making and the vice president’s place in the national security firmament. When he was nominated, I predicted Vance would not be a player in the administration. I was half wrong, Vance has worked hard to win Trump’s loyalty and been effective in supporting the president. But he is not a top advisor. As the leaked groupchat shows, the VP is in the conversation, but he isn’t in the inner circle.
The Signal Chat is Mostly Noise
Many items in the Signal chat confirm that Vance is receiving the access and playing similar roles to those of his recent predecessors.
First, Vance and his staff are fully integrated into the White House process. He is on the chat with the principals and he is asked to provide a staff contact. Vance replies to this request with his own national security advisor (title is usually abbreviated to VPNSA) Andrew Baker, a former Foreign Service officer who had been his foreign policy aide in the Senate and who holds a doctorate from Oxford. This is important, since for most of U.S. history VPs were not included in significant meetings. In the Clinton administration, Gore’s VPNSA Leon Fuerth became a regular attendee and participant in the Deputies Committee, this access has continued in subsequent administrations. The Deputies Committee is the workhorse of national security process, just below the cabinet level, where issues are hashed out.
Second, Vance trusts this group. VPs who want to have a good relationship with the president do not express opinions that contradict those of the president in any way if there is a chance the statement will leak. Vance clearly trusts the people in this chat, knows they won’t leak his concerns. Hegseth urges Vance to take those concerns to Trump. Vance could not have known that this conversation would end up in the public domain. Not long after it reached the public, Vance released a statement clarifying that he and the president had talked and were “in complete agreement.”
Third is Vance’s comprehensive view of the situation. When I did my dissertation, two former National Security Advisors told me that the vice president was one of the very few people who could bring the politics and policy together. National Security staffers saw the national security side and political staffers saw the political side, but only president and vice president could see both.
We see that in Vance’s comments, for example when he sends a series of texts in which he expresses political and diplomatic concerns:
Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan. But I think we are making a mistake.
3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.
I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.
An intelligence official chimes in that the operation could be delayed and still be effective. Secretary of Defense Hegseth argues against waiting because of the risk of leaks (ha!) and concerns that if Israel acts first it disrupts U.S. plans. There is the beginning of a deeper argument, competing worldviews. Vance is frustrated with European free riding, while Hegseth states:
This [is] not about the Houthis. I see it as two things: 1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish deterrence, which Biden cratered. But, we can easily pause. And if we do, I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC”—operations security. “I welcome other thoughts.
The first point will certainly come as news to the Houthis being bombed. In the second two points, Hegseth is making arguments for what Walter Russell Mead might call a Hamiltonian U.S. foreign policy in which the U.S. is a global power looking out for its interests, which includes the broader global order. In my ongoing analysis of Vance’s Munich speech, and in his own statements, Vance appears to advocate what Mead called the Jeffersonian foreign policy in which the United States limits its engagements abroad because of the burden the place on the American people and the risk they pose to America’s unique democracy.
The conversation ends when Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller states:
As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.
This is the most telling point about Vance and the administration’s process. First, it is Miller who can speak authoritatively on behalf of the president. Second, vice presidents usually ask to be the last person in the room when a major decision is made by the president in order to give confidential advice. This conversation indicates that the decision was already made and Vance was not able to play that role. The vice president is left to bitch about the decision in the group chat and considering whether or not to make a direct appeal. Miller forecloses that possibility, and Vance does not protest. I wrote that Vance might be the eminence grise of the administration, but that role has been taken by Miller.
In his first term, Trump was an outsider with little idea how to effectively exercise power. He has a stronger grasp of how the presidency works and has built a cadre of loyal and capable aides like Stephen Miller, who emerged as a key aide in the first Trump term. Trump is now an insider president and like the previous VPs to insider presidents (Quayle and Harris) Vance will struggle to exercise influence.