Vice President J.D. Vance's increasingly high profile three months after taking office as Donald Trump's second-in-command may end up blowing up on him if he continues to either expand on the president's pronouncements or, worse, correct them and cause rifts within the administration.
According to Wall Street Journal editorial board member Barton Swaim, the VP is playing a "dangerous game" by not staying in the background when he should letting Trump speak for himself.
In. a column for the Journal, Swaim made the case that Vance often acts like he's president and Trump is his second in command which is not sitting well some insiders.
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"Mr. Vance is far younger than the president he serves. Donald Trump was president for four years; Mr. Vance’s prior political experience consists of two years in the Senate. Yet an uncareful follower of U.S. political news might be forgiven for wondering which of them is head of state," he wrote before pointing to one telling example.
"I won’t soon forget the scene of an American vice president, inexplicably next to the president for the signing of a deal with a foreign government, scuttling the whole event by picking a fight with his boss’s opposite," he recalled. "If you didn’t already know the identities of Messrs. Trump and Vance, you could watch their Feb. 28 meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and wonder who was the principal and who the deputy. Seeing Mr. Vance conclude the spat by patting Mr. Trump’s arm, as if to say 'Attaboy, tiger,' you might guess incorrectly."
That, he claimed is part and parcel of a "dangerous game" the vice president is playing where it appears that Vance is already looking forward to taking Trump's place as the leader of the party.
Writing, "He often sounds as if he’s formulating his own ideas rather than defending the president’s. In his Feb. 14 address to European leaders in Munich, Mr. Vance made an argument so audacious that you had to wonder why it had been delegated to him," Swaim then pointed to Vance's controversial comments in the Signlagate scandal where he told participants in the chat, "I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now."
According to the columnist, "The patronizing tone is unmistakable. The president can’t be expected to understand that two perfectly evident things are at odds with each other. In the end, the vice president gave his blessing: 'if you think we should do it let’s go,' he advised the defense secretary, as if the vice president has the power to call missions off."
"In the fall of 2022, when Mr. Vance was campaigning in Ohio for a seat in the U.S. Senate, I suggested that if he won, which I thought he would, he would get bored with the job and soon move on, which in an unexpected way he did. He appears to be tiring of his present job, too, and ready to move into the next one," he concluded.
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