The ghost of VPs past haunts JD Vance and puts his political future at risk

JD Vance may have many ambitions, but being the next Hubert Humphrey probably isn’t one of them. During his 1968 presidential campaign, the Democratic vice president couldn’t escape the shadow of the Vietnam War vigorously prosecuted by the incumbent, Lyndon Baines Johnson, despite his private doubts about it.Now, the Iran war isn’t Vietnam and will probably end prior to the 2028 election, but Vance still might want to bone up on how Humphrey tried to balance achieving independence from the policy of an administration he served and provoking the ire of the sitting president of his own party.Humphrey ultimately went his own way late in the 1968 campaign, calling for a bombing pause, but went down to electoral defeat nonetheless. Vance made his own semi-declaration of independence from the Iran war last week.He couched it in political punditry, posting on X that the war was to blame for the GOP midterm defeat. This set off a furious intramural debate on the right over how to interpret the midterm debacle, and whether Vance was being “disloyal” to his boss or advancing a view that Trump himself largely shares. President Donald Trump, too, has said Iran hurt, so that’s not the potential fault line here; it is whether or not the president botched one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency by launching the Iran war last February.In an extraordinary passage in his X post, Vance wrote disparagingly of defenders of the war: “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so.“Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay.Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest.”The vice president clearly had in mind the hawkish pundits for whom he has ill-concealed contempt, but you know who has been making exactly the pro-war argument that Vance so scorns? The president of the United States, upon whose favor Vance’s political prospects depend.Since the vice president published his post, Trump ha...