Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) greets supporters at the Park Diner on July 28 in St Cloud, Minn.
I’m sympathetic to JD Vance, perhaps naively so. He and I share broadly similar biographies, although I, admittedly, have not joined the Marines, graduated from Yale Law or been anybody’s pick for vice president.
There’s still time, right?
Anyway, I was impressed by Vance’s highly regarded memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” and similarly touched by Vance’s written account of his conversion to Catholicism. I don’t think you can read that essay, published in The Lame magazine, and not conclude that Vance is one heck of a smart and thoughtful dude, even if you dislike his politics and worldview.
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I also tend to agree with Vance that lousy economic policies contributed to the decline of broad swaths of the country with a terrible human toll, which I would think is obvious to anyone familiar with the depressed condition of much of upstate New York. With policy proposals that seek to undo some of the damage, Vance has been an unorthodox thinker in the GOP and, from my perspective, a welcome one.
Despite all that, Trump made a terrible decision. As a presidential running mate, Vance is a disaster.
Part of that relates to his........