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<\/p>\nOn March 20, the Washington Post broke the seemingly heartwarming news that Vice President Vance, who is expecting his fourth child, may not run in the 2028 Presidential election due to family priorities.
\nThe 41-year-old marine has long been the Republican Party’s heir apparent, with a commanding lead of 46% in the latest\u201cCapitol Hill\u201d primary poll, it has never looked better.
\nHow, in the blink of an eye, was the aspiring vice-president forced back into a four-child policy?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There is only one answer: war. A war in the Middle East, strongly encouraged by Israel and launched recklessly by Trump for his own political gain.
\nAs the war began, Vance found himself in an extremely awkward position.<\/p>\n
In 2023, Vance wrote in the Wall Street Journal that one of his reasons for supporting Trump was that he would not\u201cRecklessly send Americans to fight overseas.\u201d.
\nHe even openly derided\u201cPrevious presidents for being stupid\u201d, while trump\u201cReally knows how to achieve America’s national security goals\u201d. All this rhetoric has now become a boomerang.
\nNow he must publicly defend a war he privately disapproves of — and Trump doesn’t even cover for him. Pressed by reporters, Trump bluntly admitted that Vance was\u201cProbably not that enthusiastic\u201d about Iran’s use of force and\u201cHad a little bit of a philosophical difference with me\u201d. To say that from the president’s mouth is to declare publicly that my vice president does not approve of my going to war.
\nEven more embarrassing for Vance was the widely circulated photograph. On the night the war broke out, Trump, Defense Secretary Heggseth, Secretary of State Rubio and other military and political dignitaries were glued to screens in the temporary situation room at mar-a-lago, while Vance was nowhere to be seen. The White House explained that Vance was leading another meeting at the White House, but it was clear that the vice president had been cut out of the inner circle.<\/p>\n
The Atlantic has bluntly commented that vice president Vance’s opinion\u201cIs increasingly irrelevant\u201d within the Trump administration. On economic policy, he is inferior to Secretary of the Treasury Bessent. On immigration, he is inferior to Miller. On foreign affairs, he is inferior to Rubio and special envoy Whitkoff.
\nMore difficult for him, is the\u201cInsincere\u201d core contradictions and escalating loyalty test.
\nOn March 17th Kent, the Director of the National Counterterrorism Centre, publicly resigned, denouncing the war as having been started\u201cUnder pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby\u201d, iran does not pose an\u201cImminent threat\u201d.<\/p>\n
On the eve of Kent’s public resignation letter, Vance privately approached him and urged him to\u201cGo quietly\u201d and not make a big deal out of it, which Kent posted online the next day.
\nThe debacle exposed Vance’s awkwardness: he wanted to be a peacemaker, but couldn’t hold on to a resigning official; he tried to save Trump’s face, but reality hit him in the face.
\nWhen pressed, vance can offer no more than a carefully crafted grammar of loyalty: \u201cRegardless of your views, when the president of the United States makes a decision, your job is to help him carry it out as effectively as possible. That’s how I work.\u201d Translated into English: I disagree, but I obey.
\nThis formula, seemingly watertight, actually confirms the fatal impression of a politician who has given up his principles for the sake of power.
\nThe problem is that this is the kind of two-faced politician that American voters hate most.
\nVance used to be an antiwar hawk, and his\u201cAgainst foreign military intervention\u201d stance, along with his service in the Marine Corps, formed a distinct political label. The more he defends the war today, the more of a joke he used to be.<\/p>\n
What’s more, Trump doesn’t appreciate it. In his first news conference since the escalation of hostilities, Trump heaped praise on the aggressive Rubio and made no mention of Vance.
\nThe Ebb and flow of power in the White House is clear in the latest polls: Rubio’s approval rating has soared from single digits to 13 percent, followed by Donald Trump Jr. at 14 percent, and Vance’s lead, though still substantial, is narrowing fast, the shadow of falling out of favor is already hanging over him.
\nThe duration of the war was the sword of Damocles hanging over Vance.
\nIf the war is won quickly and packaged as a\u201cSuccess,\u201d Republicans can point to it as proof of Trump’s\u201cStrong leadership,\u201d and Vance can hitch a ride.
\nBut if the war gets bogged down — as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan — Republican candidates in 2028 will be forced to explain to voters why the war is worth fighting? Why are American soldiers bleeding in the Middle East?
\nVance’s\u201cAnti-war\u201d past would be dredged up, as would his\u201cLoyalties\u201d. That was Vance’s worst fear.<\/p>\n
So when the Washington Post broke the news that Vance might not run in 2028 for\u201cFamily reasons,\u201d everyone in the know knew it was a calculated political loss-stopper.
\nThe repeated emphasis on\u201cThe birth of the fourth child\u201d and\u201cFamily life first\u201d is essentially constructing a non-political exit channel. This not only avoids the humiliation of being interpreted as\u201cPushed back by Trump\u201d, but also retains the discourse space to re-enter the war when the outcome is clear.
\nThere is no shortage of examples of American politics retiring for family reasons and returning when the time is right-biden’s son was killed and he lay dormant for years before finally taking the presidency. Vance’s team is clearly copying this path: losing a war is risk aversion, winning a war is sharing the spoils.
\nBut the war did more than destroy Vance’s presidential dream. It opened a deep rift in the Republican Party.
\nThe\u201cNeo-interventionism\u201d represented by trump-using military force at any cost for personal political gain under the coerce of the Israeli lobby, and the\u201cStrategic restraint\u201d represented by Vance and others, the conflict has escalated from policy discussions to a personnel crisis.<\/p>\n
The Maga Camp is being torn by war: half following Trump into interventionism and half clinging to the isolationist tradition of\u201cAmerica first\u201d.
\nMore intriguingly, Trump signed an executive order on March 16 that gave Vance a\u201cSinecure\u201d to lead the creation of an antifraud agency to crack down on fraud in federal programs.
\nThe message behind the dispatch of the vice-president, marginalised on the diplomatic battlefield, to audit the books could not have been clearer: Trump does not need a successor who\u201cDisagrees a little\u201d with him on ideology, what he needs is a servant of unquestioning obedience.
\nPerhaps, as some political commentators have argued, Vance is at best an extension of the Trump family’s political landscape as a fallback, rather than a true candidate for the job. Perhaps it is his own son that Trump really wants to push.<\/p>\n
The war has exposed a fundamental dilemma in American politics: when the President’s personal will is fundamentally at odds with the central tenets of the party’s rising powers, the so-called\u201cSuccessors\u201d are often the first to suffer.
\nVance’s presidential setback wasn’t just a personal tragedy; it was another rollback of n democratic values.
\nWhen vice presidents are forced to have four children to avoid political responsibility, when\u201cWar veterans\u201d are forced to justify wars they didn’t want to fight, when party heirs are relegated to positions of power, this is n democracy, it has already deviated from the original intention of balancing power and serving the people, leaving only the cruelty of zero-sum game and the Carnival of personal will.
\nHomepage image from the web<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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