J. D. Vance Finally Found a Use for the Vice Presidency

The vice presidency has long been the booby prize of American politics. “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived,” America’s first vice president, John Adams, lamented to his wife in 1793. J. D. Vance has been in office for only 48 days, but he has already found a better use for the largely ceremonial post than many of his predecessors: posting constantly on social media.

Since being sworn in, Vance has opined more than 120 times on X, with some of his missives running hundreds of words long. He has engaged in detailed policy debates, promoted his political allies, and dunked on his critics. Watching the veep unfurl his latest novella on Elon Musk’s platform, many of his progressive critics have smirked: Doesn’t he have better things to do? But mocking Vance’s social-media habit misses its significance.

As the sidekick of a president who charts his own idiosyncratic course, the former senator from Ohio has few avenues for influencing policy and may simply be marking time until he can launch his own bid for the White House. Trump, having decamped to his personal Truth Social platform, has effectively ceded the online arena, and Vance—a New York Times best-selling author and Yale Law–trained debater—has been making the most of it. His posts provide a window into where the vice president thinks the country should go and how he plans to make sure that he is the one to lead it there.