The Republican nominee for vice president of the United States, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, must find it hard to walk.
You know, what with his foot shoved into his mouth all the time.
At a time when Vance’s boss, former President Donald Trump, wants nothing more than to train his fire and focus national attention on their newly anointed Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, Vance’s stupid, pandering statements keep stealing the spotlight.
The latest one comes courtesy of a 2021 interview he had with fired, disgraced former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
At the time, Vance was launching a campaign for the U.S. Senate. Because he had been one of the charter members of the GOP “Never Trump” crowd—he once compared his current running mate to Adolf Hitler—Vance was desperate to mollify Trump and reassure the MAGA crowd that he was one of them.
He apparently thought the best way to do that is to say something really, really dumb.
So, Vance said he was tired of hearing from “childless cat ladies” who have no stake in America’s future and “want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
He specifically named Harris and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, a Hoosier, as among those he considered “childless cat ladies.”
When his remarks resurfaced, Vance didn’t distance himself from them—because, again, saying ill-informed, stupid things seems to be the way to ingratiate himself with his intended audience.
No, Vance said his comments were “sarcastic” and that he had “nothing against cats.”
Which leaves open the possibility—maybe even the likelihood—that he does have something against Americans who do not or cannot have children.
Sigh.
I long for the day when ignorance—in this case, willful and therefore ignoble ignorance—no longer will be rewarded by such a large slice of the American public.
Let’s focus on the substance of Vance’s sentiment: His argument that only those of us who have children care about the future of the United States.
By Vance’s dubious reasoning, George Washington—you know, the guy who led the nascent republic to independence and served as America’s first president—wasn’t invested in the country he helped will into being. The father of the country, like Kamala Harris, was a stepparent to his wife’s children from a previous marriage and part of what we now would call a blended family.
There long has been speculation that Washington was sterile.
This is the first time, though, that anyone has been bold or foolish enough to suggest that our ultimate founding father—the one often referred to as “the indispensable American”—couldn’t be a patriot because he might have been infertile.
James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution and the father of the Bill of Rights, also never had children. Even though Madison helped think through, draft and bring into being the charter that provides a framework for what Abraham Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth,” that apparently is not enough for J.D. Vance to consider our fourth president fully American.
Then there’s Donald Trump’s favorite president, Andrew Jackson.
Jackson also never had biological children. Like Pete Buttigieg, Jackson adopted, even taking a favorite nephew into his nuclear family and renaming him Andrew Jackson Jr.
Until now, no one has suggested that Old Hickory—who, like Buttigieg, wore this country’s uniform and fought in its defense—should be disenfranchised because he built his family through adoption rather than procreation.
Maybe, though, Vance never intended to attack straight white males such as Washington, Madison and Jackson who could not or chose not to have children.
Instead, perhaps his intention was to belittle and marginalize women and gay Americans.
If so, in addition to deploring the bigotry of Vance’s comments, I don’t understand the political calculation he and his running mate have made.
Most smart politicians understand that their profession is a game of addition, not subtraction. It’s about encouraging people to vote for you, not giving them reasons to march through a blizzard, a hurricane and an earthquake to vote against you.
But that’s Trump and, apparently, Vance for you.
Their approach to finding themselves in a hole is to keep digging.
Oh, well.
As Forrest Gump—who fathered a child and therefore, according to Vance, would be qualified to run the country—famously said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”