For the first year of the second Trump presidency, Vice President JD Vance served primarily as the White House’s designated tough guy. Rather than a softener of Trumpian harshness, he was charged with being (or chose to be) tougher than the president himself, whether that meant publicly pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or defending the Minneapolis immigration crackdown or making a symbolic flight to Greenland, the frozen object of the president’s desire.
In the past several months, Vance’s role has changed. He was the most prominent internal skeptic of the president’s decision to attack Iran and then the would-be diplomatic disentangler of the Iranian knot. (He has also embarked on a — somewhat — culturally conciliatory book tour and welcomed a new son.)
Because I think the Iran war has been a folly and a snare, I have greatly preferred this version of the Vance vice presidency to the version that seemed subsumed into id-driven conservative politics. By contrast, while I thought Marco Rubio’s performance in his first year as secretary of state was extremely effective, Rubio’s performance vis-à-vis Iran has often been a profile in evasion, letting other officials take risks to either own the war or seek peace while he keeps his options open.
Republican Party politics, however, often do not conform to my preferences, and the version of Vance that I’ve preferred is also the version who seems to his internal GOP enemies to be politically weakened. From swarming online attacks to stinging critiques from The Wall Street Journal and Ben Shapiro, there’s a palpable sense in the Vance-skeptical parts of the right that the vice president is unusually vulnerable and that a Rubio scenario for 2028 might actually be viable.
The Vance skeptics have some data on their side. Rubio has crept up on Vance in a new 2028 New Hampshire primary poll and sits not that far below the vice president in betting markets. And you can certainly make a case that being initially right about the Iran war doesn’t offer much political upside to the vice president.