J. D. Vance Is Rankling Fellow Veterans

His Marine status could be an advantage for the GOP—unless he trumpets his years of service too much.

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J. D. Vance’s veteran status could be an advantage for the GOP—unless he trumpets his years of service too much and annoys his fellow vets in the process.

Breaking the Code

J. D. Vance is a U.S. Marine, and he wants you to know it. In the days since he was selected as the GOP vice-presidential nominee, Vance and the Republican Party have touted his service credentials with little discretion. At a rally on Monday, he said, “Well, I don’t know, Kamala, I served in the United States Marine Corps, and I built a business. What the hell have you done other than collect a government check?”

Vance hasn’t always grandstanded when it comes to his time in uniform: During his Senate campaign against Tim Ryan two years ago, he spoke of the need for modesty, telling Greg Kelly of Newsmax, “I hate these guys who talk about their military service not because it’s an important part of their identity, but to use it to deflect against any criticism of their record.” And at the Republican National Convention this year, Vance told the crowd, with tact, that after 9/11, he “did what thousands of other young men my age did in that time of soaring patriotism and love of country: I enlisted in the United States Marines.”

But if his tone at the rally earlier this week is any indication, Vance may be embracing a newfound lack of modesty when it comes to his service. It’s a paradox: Vance seems to have been picked, in part, because of his veteran status. Donald Trump has shown a pattern of mixing ostentatious patriotism with disdain for American service members—he has described those who died in combat as “suckers” and “losers,” as first reported by The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg—and he may hope that having a vet on the ticket will deflect from criticism of that history. But if Vance trumpets his years of service too much, he risks squandering the advantage that Republicans have tried to build with veterans and the military.

Vance wasn’t a Marine who saw combat. His specialty while he was deployed to Iraq was public affairs, which means he wrote stories and took photos. That in itself is no reason to question him. He served honorably in uniform, which the majority of Americans don’t even consider doing. Among veterans, there’s a mutual understanding that everyone is part of the military family—no matter what their job was. I’m a veteran myself, and I understand that there’s a code: Anyone who volunteered to wear the uniform deserves respect.

But few things anger veterans like someone who goes beyond talking about their service and starts bragging about it. When veterans bring undue attention to their service, they invite deep scrutiny of their record that they might not actually want. And when they use their military service as a political cudgel, that veteran code of respect is voided.

The GOP is clearly trying to court the veteran vote with Vance, and to paint him as a military hero whom civilian patriots should want to vote for. Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska—a Marine himself—went on Fox Business to talk about how Vance will be good for the country and for veterans because of his Marine background. Right-wing pundits and others on social media have been treating Vance like a Prussian field marshal: The venture capitalist David Sacks posted, “When the Twin Towers came down, JD Vance enlisted in the Marine Corps, gung-ho to exact justice on America’s enemies.” In a Washington Post op-ed, the conservative political commentator Hugh Hewitt called Vance a “warrior” and a “grunt” who can speak directly to veterans and blue-collar voters.

In 2016, the GOP focused heavily on America’s veteran voting bloc; today, more than 18 million living Americans have served, or some 6 percent of the adult population. (There are many more, of course, who are related to veterans or who care about defense issues for other reasons.) The GOP’s focus paid off: The New York Times exit polling showed that veterans turned out heavily for Trump, an advantage that slipped in 2020.

Vance’s Marine credentials could, if leveraged properly, help the GOP gain back some of that support. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan I have spoken with are glad to have one of their own on a top ticket. But they understand that just because someone has worn the uniform doesn’t mean that they are a strong candidate or a good person.

“People are excited … It’s past time for us to have some veterans on these tickets,” Joe Chenelly, the national executive director of the veteran-service organization American Veterans (AMVETS), told me. But Chenelly noted that any veteran can overplay their hand when it comes to their record, Vance included. “I personally don’t like when veterans run and their No. 1 qualification for office is being a veteran. And he’s come close to that,” Chenelly said. “There’s a lot of room for backlash from the veterans community when that happens. He has a responsibility to be very mindful of the way he frames his service.”

Vance hasn’t totally broken with the veteran code yet. But his behavior so far shows that he might continue to reject the kind of mindfulness Chenelly is talking about. Over the past few years, Vance has changed his wardrobe to more closely resemble that of Donald Trump, and in the days since his VP nomination, he’s changed his rhetorical approach to sound more like his running mate too. At the RNC, he lauded unity, but in his subsequent solo rallies, he’s claimed, falsely, that Kamala Harris wants to “totally decriminalize” illegal immigration, and that Democrats believe it is “racist to do anything”—including drink Diet Mountain Dew.

Even taking Vance out of the equation, up until last week, Trump had a clear advantage with veteran voters and those who care about foreign policy and defense: the fact that Biden fumbled the end of the “forever war.” Trump had been able to thread the rhetorical needle, taking credit for signing the deal to leave Afghanistan but blaming Biden for the way it was done. Voters of both parties disapproved of the way America pulled out of Afghanistan, and Trump could use that fact to go on the offensive (as he did in last month’s debate), because he knew that Biden would always be tied to the images of Afghans falling from a cargo plane as they tried to escape Kabul, and of U.S. Marines killed while standing guard during the chaos.

But now the presumptive Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, can distance herself from Biden’s Afghanistan policy, which Republicans have largely managed to tie to the president himself rather than to his administration more broadly. (When I speak with veterans and those involved in the Afghanistan withdrawal, they invariably complain about Biden, not Harris.) Pollsters pay little attention to the veteran vote, which makes it difficult to track, and we don’t yet know how Trump and Vance will square against a Harris-led ticket. But the fact that Harris can break free of the Afghanistan legacy could give her an advantage with the veteran vote. Chenelly, of AMVETS, said that many of the veterans in his organization don’t know all that much about Harris. But they have been angry with Biden for Afghanistan and even blame some of the current military-recruiting crisis on him.

What we do know is that if the Trump campaign wants to properly court veterans and their families, Vance ought to stay humble about his military service—an unlikely feat in a campaign where humility is not the guiding principle.

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