The Wielded Pen

"If you screwed the American taxpayer, the federal government is now going to say you're cut off, no more." That warning came from Vice President JD Vance earlier in September. As head of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud—his main domestic assignment, showing how he applies state authority to cancel benefits and bar borrowers—he uses executive power to strip benefits and block loans. He announced that roughly 870,000 borrowers suspected of pandemic relief fraud cannot get future federal loans. Days later, he said about 760,000 people were losing Affordable Care Act coverage. When a listener asks how he would govern, the clue lies in the wielded pen.

At its core, his record points toward an active, populist nationalist presidency that upends traditional conservatism. Commentators describe this platform as socially conservative economic nationalism, designed to revive domestic manufacturing while supporting working-class households. Speaking in 2019, Vance said conservatives have good reason to fear state overreach, yet he argued that shying away from political power when problems need solving is a mistake, insisting "we have to get over that." He has no interest in shrinking the state; he plans to use it.

That vision carries real weight because he currently leads the pack for the Republican nomination. While candidate trackers say nobody has officially entered the 2028 race yet, they list Vance as likely to run, with a 41 percent median share across recent primary surveys. A broader electorate presents a steep hurdle, however: the polling analysis site Decision Desk recently found his net favorability rating sitting at negative 11.5 points. Vance remains undeclared, insisting any decision comes only after the midterms.

His climb has been rapid for the country's 50th vice president since taking office on January 20th, 2025. Around the June 2016 release of his Rust Belt memoir Hillbilly Elegy and on his book tour, Vance called himself a "Never Trump guy," while in private calling Trump "a moral disaster" and potentially "America's Hitler." Now, he acts as Trump's primary governing enforcer. To see why a conservative vice president would bar loan recipients and steer government muscle into the economy, you have to trace the intellectual rebellion that remade his thinking.

That shift began with a clean break from free-market doctrine. Observers point to Vance's own account of slowly rebelling against decades of established policy orthodoxies, insisting that "vis-a-vis international economics, the nation should be standing for the economic interests of its own citizens." Proponents emphasize how that targets Rust Belt decay. As Vance put it, "We should understand deindustrialization as, in part, something that decimates working-class families, and, of course, when you destroy working-class families, then a whole lot of social pathologies move in." To counter that decay, he embraced national conservatism—the specific philosophical framework he embraces to justify protective tariffs and government economic interventions, breaking with post-Reagan orthodoxy as reported by the Christian Science Monitor.

Observers tracking his New Right ties point to the guidance of tech billionaire Peter Thiel, alongside Vance’s conversion to Catholicism. In a 2020 essay, Vance called a campus talk by Thiel "the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School," writing that he had been "obsessed with achievement … not as an end to something meaningful, but to win a social competition." Vance later worked for Thiel, who shaped his views on technology policy. For Vance’s Senate bid, Thiel supported him with 10 million dollars directed to a pro-Vance super PAC—an independent political fundraising group.

For New Right thinkers, Vance represents an effort to anchor that populism into a lasting governing philosophy. Oren Cass, whose think tank American Compass translates Trump-era populist impulses into concrete policy, put it bluntly: "The pre-Trump political alignment in this country is just gone." Reportedly, national conservatives welcome state involvement in the economy and view declining birth rates as an urgent crisis. Vance champions natalist social policy—his belief that state tax codes should explicitly reward childrearing to address falling birth rates through expanded child benefits. As First Things editor Rusty Reno observed, this movement is "pivoting towards a politics of solidarity, restored solidarity," borrowing economic tools from the old left.

That economic unorthodoxy triggered swift pushback from traditional conservative donors. Major Republican contributors opposed his rise, viewing his populist economics as a threat to their free-market, small-government principles. During his Senate race, the Club for Growth—an anti-tax, free-market conservative advocacy group—spent roughly 1.5 million dollars on attack ads targeting his campaign, while conservative radio host Erick Erickson dismissed subsidies like the Intel deal as "socialism with an R next to its name." Yet Vance kept advocating state-directed industrial policy. The question is how that distinct doctrine holds up while serving inside Donald Trump's West Wing.

Allies point to total institutional loyalty. Scholar Joel Goldstein observes that a vice president's power depends on trust with the president, mattering far more than formal authority. Through early 2026, Vance broke eight Senate ties to protect administration priorities: confirming Pete Hegseth at defense, passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and sustaining military actions in Venezuela. When senators challenged emergency tariff authorities—the legal mechanisms enabling unilateral White House trade penalties—Vance broke that tie, too. And when federal judges ruled against the administration, he maintained publicly that courts cannot control legitimate executive power.

He brought that combative defense to the press room. When the White House barred Politico and other outlets from briefings, Vance called the move "totally appropriate," insisting those journalists could still report. He defended the administration's trade offensive just as firmly, supporting reported 25 percent tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports, alongside a 10 percent duty on Chinese goods.

Behind closed doors, observers argue his foreign policy reflects genuine restraint. In late 2023, Vance warned that an attack on the Iranian mainland would be "a mistake," viewing direct strikes as a mistake on the mainland. The New York Times and The Atlantic reported that he voiced serious objections to Trump before the February airstrikes. When conflict escalated and at least 18 American service members were killed, reports described an unmistakable divide.

Yet Vance never broke ranks in public. He maintained both he and Trump share skepticism toward foreign entanglements, though Trump noted Vance seemed less enthusiastic about military action. In April 2026, Vance led 21 hours of reported ceasefire talks in Islamabad, emerging to reiterate that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons. Concededly, while Vance executed Trump's orders in Pakistan, his underlying doctrine insists American interests must remain distinct from foreign conflicts.

His economic philosophy splits further from traditional Republican lines. While Trump championed corporate tax relief, reporter Simon van Zuylen-Wood noted that Vance reportedly described Trump's signature tax cuts as a failure during an interview in 2020. In the Senate, Vance worked with Democrats to limit CEO pay, increase rail safety rules, and end tax breaks for giant corporate mergers. A former acquaintance noted Vance even shared common ground with Elizabeth Warren on reducing wealth inequality. Yet while Vance balances this delicate ideological posture inside Washington, voters across the country see his record in a sharply different light.

Proponents argue that Vance's focus on domestic jobs and family policy is forging a durable working-class coalition. Citing election data, writer Iwan Morgan documented that the 2024 ticket captured 56 percent of voters without a college degree, alongside majorities among lower-income households. Primary trackers report that Vance consistently leads early fields over rivals like Marco Rubio. And in the Yale Youth Poll, Republicans reportedly chose him 83 percent of the time as more likely to win a general election against a Democrat.

That commanding standing across the conservative base shows up almost everywhere. A spring profile reported his favorability among Republicans at 74 percent, while The Economist and YouGov found overwhelming approval among Trump voters. When activists gathered for CPAC, the big conservative grassroots conference, Vance won 53 percent in their presidential straw poll, finishing well ahead of Marco Rubio.

The trouble, critics contend, is that fierce party loyalty masks severe liabilities with the wider electorate. In an April AP-NORC survey, 53 percent of adults viewed him unfavorably, while a YouGov poll also found a majority holding negative impressions. Campaign analysts watch net favorability, which defines the critical spread between favorable and unfavorable impressions used by pollsters to measure general-election electability. According to the RealClearPolitics aggregator, his net rating sat underwater at negative 8.1 points. Critics also highlight deep skepticism across demographic minorities, where surveys showed clear majorities of Black and Hispanic adults holding unfavorable views.

Critics also point to documented erosion within his working-class base, where YouGov found his support among lower-income Republicans fell eight points after January. Opponents keep pointing to past provocative remarks, from calling rival leaders "childless cat ladies" to telling CNN, "if I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do." On top of that sits broader public fatigue with the White House, with CNN reporting that most Americans felt the conflict in Iran hurt national interests. As Goldstein reportedly pointed out, whenever an administration struggles with particular groups of voters, that baggage trails the vice president, who has to find ways to stand apart without losing his political identity. He remains the undisputed frontrunner across the primary landscape, with all eyes turning toward that deliberate timeline waiting after the midterms.

On paper, Vance has still not formally declared, despite that likely-to-run tag from earlier. Donald Trump brings up 2028 all the time, though without handing down a formal endorsement, and Vance says he never brings up what's ahead with the president. Instead, he's sticking to that deliberate timetable from earlier, waiting until after the midterms to sit down with his wife, Usha, and work through their family's future. He has explained that he avoids deciding things until he absolutely has to, adding that Usha is remarkably blunt whenever she pushes back on what he says.

That personal hesitation sits alongside an aggressive global posture. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Vance warned European leaders that American support comes with conditions, criticizing their election rules and standing up for Germany's far-right AfD party. To him, the biggest danger facing Europe isn't Russia or China, but what he called the threat from within. He argued Washington has to spend the next 40 years turning its focus toward East Asia. Over in Ukraine, he favored locking in the battle lines roughly where they are right now. It all flows from an instinct for foreign military restraint, rooted in that same skepticism that made strikes in Iran look like a mistake on the mainland.

Stepping from that secondary seat to the top of a presidential ticket brings steep institutional hurdles. As Goldstein put it, voters want someone who can lead, and convincing the public to see a longtime second-in-command as the country's primary figure is never easy, especially while carrying that governing baggage from earlier.

Still, his executive record provides a clear picture of the presidency he wants to build. Profiles characterize his worldview as post-liberal governance—which means using the power of the federal government to foster communal and working-class solidarity, deliberately casting aside old free-market orthodoxies. It draws a direct line between manufacturing subsidies, family welfare, and national sovereignty. Those aggressive agency crackdowns served as the working blueprint for the wielded pen, using state leverage through tariffs, industrial subsidies, and tight borders. Whether this blue-collar coalition can overcome his deep national unfavorability is still an open question. What isn't in doubt is the broader ambition: taking a movement born of one man's personality and turning it into an enduring state doctrine.

For more on where this movement is heading, check out national conservatism. And follow the 2028 presidential race; we have more stories there, so you'll stay informed as the campaign develops. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you next time on Angle.