A few months ago, the teaser for A Complete Unknownwas released on YouTube, a film by director James Mangold that aims to capture Bob Dylan’s rise and his journey from folk hero to the controversy of his electric era. There is a beautiful moment in the trailer where Pete Seeger (played by Ed Norton) explains to an audience: “We met a young man. He dropped in out of nowhere and played a song.At that moment, we glimpsed the future.” As a tangent, Timothy Chalamet has absolutely nailed the young Dylan look and mannerisms, including the slight air of irritated insouciance with which he delivers lines while singing, like a sixth-form student forced to recite a song to pass their exams.
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN | Official Teaser | Searchlight Pictures
Like Dylan, Vance embodies a certain Midwestern Americana, something that evokes the Americana of old and also a Hillbilly Hope that promises to make America the Shining City on the Hill once again. Among all the takes on the debate from various organisations, the most interesting was from New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat, who argued that Vance “staked out a position that could be framed as more moderate or centrist than his party’s orthodoxy. That’s a very Bill Clintonian combination, one that wins debates—and elections.”
Bill Clinton, like Barack Obama, is a true one-off. Not many governors from Arkansas go on to the White House and then define their party’s politics for decades. They are outsiders, not the candidates backed by their party, who rose up through intellect, grit, and gumption. In fact, it is a testament to the mainstream media’s ironclad control over the means of communication that Vance entered the debate with the lowest favourability rating among the four people on the ticket. There is no doubt that, intellectually at least, he is the smartest and most grounded of the group.
Before the debate, there was a school of thought that a smooth-talking salesman like Vance, who has danced with the devils of Silicon Valley and convinced an egomaniac whom he labelled “cultural heroin” to make him his VP, might be too much for the former high school teacher who has never had a national profile. And honestly, if one were a Democrat supporter, one would not exactly be filled with hope.
Somehow, the two people on the Democrat ticket are individuals who cannot even counter their opponent’s lies, having replaced a candidate who was falling asleep before finishing his sentences. And all of this is in a largely positive media ecosystem. It is the political equivalent of Triple H failing to beat the Rock when Shane McMahon was the referee in WWE’s PPV Backlash 2000. Walz is not a fan of debates, preferring unscripted engagements, and it showed, as Vance ran away with it so much that even the NYT had to admit that Walz “failed to expose” his opponent’s debate masquerade.
Triple H vs. The Rock – WWE Title Match: Backlash 2000
Despite two clear opportunities—Springfield and the January 6th insurrection—it often fell to the moderators to counter Vance’s smooth mendacity. Furthermore, the Vance that we have read about endlessly in the papers—the one who rails against “childless cat ladies” or displays improper amoure for his couch—was simply not present. The man who used to rant and rave on podcasts was completely absent; the volte-face was almost as complete as Harris going from a liberal to a mainstream candidate. He was smooth, likeable, and managed to explain Trump’s worldview with a chilling air of normalcy. He had the tone of a salesman who could sell you water during a flood. Vance was simply better prepared on most topics, from abortion to Israel to immigration, while Walz appeared out of his depth, resembling more a high school teacher and assistant football coach than ever—someone whose presence one heartbeat away from nuclear weapons would make you shudder.
It is one of democracy’s deeper flaws that talented— often pugilist— orators are often preferred to able administrators. Vance simply waltzed through topics, making Walz look lost when he pointed out that Iran was far closer to a nuclear weapon now than they were under Trump.
Perhaps the most interesting moment came when Vance, questioned about January 6th, said: “I am focused on the future,” completely avoiding answering whether he believed the last election was “stolen” or about the peaceful transfer of power.
The focus on the future might not just portend to this election but to a post-Trump MAGA, where flag bearers like Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy could take MAGA forward in a time when the liberal movement seems to have alienated a lot of ordinary Americans, including many legal migrants who are actually moving from Blue to Red states. Such an incident was just not conceivable 20 years ago.
As this author has pointed out before, Vance comes from stronger grounding in the Conservative movement than Trump. He can draw from the teachings of various folks including Silicon Valley boss Peter Thiel, Notre Dame Professor Patrick Deenan, neo-reactionary blogger Curtis Yarin and philosopher Rene Girard, all important intellectual cogs in the new MAGA.
MAGA might continue to dominate the Republican party even after Trump has gone and could very well do so in America as well, given that the liberal movement simply has too many inconsistencies to be coherent. Perhaps that’s why it has propped up rambling talkers who can’t defend their own ideas, simply because they don’t know what those ideas are. Vance on the other hand, despite doing a complete volte-face is a master of Trumpian politics, but in a way that’s far more subtle and less sabre-rattling than his boss.
Bob Dylan took the American storytelling tradition to a new level with six decades of superlative songwriting. JD Vance’ story might be very different, but it’s one that could matter a great deal to the future of American politics, much like Pete Seger felt when he heard a young Dylan. It’s not inconceivable that a post-MAGA future will have Vance at the very centre of it.