I do not think that Vice President J. D. Vance is much good for anything but political self-advancement and expressions of retrogressive political views, personal attacks on opponents, and denigrations of multi-faceted bigotry. He celebrates the robber-baron and KKK America of the 1920s and excuses the antisemitic and pro-fascist expressions of fellow Republicans.
Vance’s perverse propensities make his public comment about his hope that Usha Vance, his Hindu wife, will adopt his Catholicism intriguing. Many have wondered why he made this odd comment in public. They wonder whether he was undermining his marriage. They even wonder whether he meant to undermine it. If so, they would have to wonder why he would. After all, an annulment would be highly unlikely at this point, and adultery would be contrary to his professed faith and possibly detrimental to his political ambitions. (I am unsure about the latter point since the MAGA tribe disregards misconduct on their side of the political divide and might approve of his discarding a Hindu wife.) Some have implied that his public, seemingly intimate embrace of Erika Kirk, Charlie’s ex-wife, at a Turning Point USA gathering in Oxford, MS, on 29 October suggests that he might have an extra-marital romantic interest or intend a post-divorce courtship.
I believe that Vance’s remarks and conduct reflect lapses in judgment. I also believe that they reflect tensions in his marriage arising from rapidly changing circumstances in the past dozen years of his life. Consider his major life events of those years. He graduated from Yale law school in 2013, married Usha in 2014, worked in different law and finance jobs, fathered three children born between 2017 and 2021, converted from atheism to Catholicism in 2019, was elected to the Senate in 2022, and became vice president in 2025. Notable is his conversion after his marriage and between the births of his children. Understandings and assumptions before his conversion and the birth of a child might change or lapse after them because of new perceptions of, feelings about, and relationships with his wife. When he was an atheist and childless, his wife’s religion might not have mattered to him; his conversion to Catholicism and his fatherhood might have made her religion a matter of concern.
I have no idea how J. D. and Usha’s marriage will evolve. It is none of my business, and it is none of yours. It is only their business and the business of their families and perhaps their closest friends. There I and we should leave it.
But for one thing: Vance brought his hope of her conversion into the public domain, not once as a slip, but several times: once, shame on us for making anything of it; more than once, shame on him for what is likely a political motive. For marriage is a personal and private matter, not a political and public one. By making his hope public, Vance is likely not only jeopardizing his marriage, but also attempting to advance his political standing. He seems to be trying to be more than he is, more Christian than most by pushing his faith on his wife and presenting himself as the male head of the family—aspects of virtue to the MAGA tribe and evangelicals.
Vance is practicing what most or all of us do at one time or another, but he is practicing it at all times: fashioning oneself to give an advantageous appearance of himself to others. Most of us have moments of weakness when we worry about how we present ourselves to others. Do we pretend to be more successful than we are? Do we give a false but favorable impression of ourselves on social media? Do we worry that our clothes are not suitable for the occasion or that we speak ungrammatically? Do we worry about which spoon to use for the soup? (I recall the old joke about the punishments of those tortured eternally in Hell for their sins: Jews for eating pork, Catholics for eating meat on Friday, Episcopalians for using their salad fork to eat the entrée.) What we do on a small scale, politicians do on a large scale.
Many, if not most, politicians like Vance—in fact, many politicians not like Vance—make a professional practice of fraudulent self-presentations. The most notorious example is, of course, Donald John Trump, who would have us believe that he is the best at anything, smartest, most stable, most successful, most popular, and on and on. Aside from the necessary hypocrisy of such self-presentation, there is the threat of self-delusion. Trump probably does believe himself to be the “est-iest.” The possibility that he might believe that “Trump is always right,” thereby mislead himself, and endanger all of us should scare the bejesus out of everyone.
Environmental influences can effect the same sort of self-delusion. Rumor has it that, after acting in so many westerns, John Wayne came to adopt the proto-Republican philosophy and its “rugged individual” posture of the cowboy. Likewise, Ronald Reagan, who began life as a Democrat but, hired as a salesman or spokesman for Republican-owned companies, came to believe his scripted lines and became a Republican.
The problem with adopted or induced identifications is a loss of true identity—will the real Vance or Trump or Wayne or Reagan please stand up—and a loss of integrity. Again, Vance is an interesting specimen. The many life changes in his short life, from hillbilly to high-tech entrepreneur, suggest his chameleon-like adaptability. After being an atheist most of his life, he converted to Catholicism and makes a public display of it. Yet his new-found faith gives no hint of benign influence on his political beliefs or conduct; his professed identity does not square with personal integrity. Given his conversation, it is remarkable, the more so in view of his narrative of childhood abuses and deprivations, that he shows no concern for the disadvantaged and the discriminated against, and no respect, not to mention love, for his political opponents. So the question is, who is J.D. Vance? What is core except personal ambition? We need answers to these questions because he is more than likely to be a candidate for the presidency in 2028 (and an occupant of the White House even sooner if impeachment or cheeseburgers do not remove Trump from office before then).
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