Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists Ross Douthat, David French, Michelle Goldberg and Bret Stephens to discuss Donald Trump’s upcoming vice-presidential pick: who he might choose; who would help Mr. Trump the most electorally; the strengths and weaknesses of several possible running mates; and which of them might pose the biggest threat to President Biden’s re-election chances.
Patrick Healy: Folks, in a presidential race where there has been relatively little movement in the polls, and so many voters have unchanging views of the candidates, there’s one big surprise coming: who Donald Trump picks as his running mate. So illuminate things for me: Is there a V.P. candidate who would make a genuine difference for Trump in the campaign and in the November election vote? What matters most about Trump’s choice? Bret?
Bret Stephens: The choice is especially consequential this year for two reasons. First, as Democrats like to point out when questions of Joe Biden’s age come up, Trump is also pretty damn old. So the possibility that his vice president would succeed Trump in the middle of his term is not implausible. Second, the choice will tell us if Trump wants to double down on MAGA-land or broaden his base by implicitly reaching out to more independent voters. If, say, he chooses someone like North Dakota’s Doug Burgum, he’s signaling the former. If it’s Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the latter.
Ross Douthat: It’s not just that Trump is old, it’s also that — fears of his permanent power notwithstanding — he’s term-limited, which means that his V.P. choice will get to start their own presidential campaign relatively early, rather than suffer loyally through the slings and arrows of a first term and re-election campaign as a normal vice-presidential pick would have to do. Which is part of the answer to why anyone would want this job, after watching Mike Pence’s fate; yes, there’s a good chance Trump will sabotage any would-be successor, but there’s also a chance that Trump’s V.P. will be seen a president-in-waiting by, say, late 2025.
As to the choice, I would divide it slightly differently. I’d say there are:
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Outreach picks, where Trump is trying to win over a key demographic (picking Senator Tim Scott in the hopes it helps him win more African American men, say, or picking Representative Elise Stefanik in a bid for suburban women);
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Reassurance picks, where Trump is trying to signal that he’ll actually be running a somewhat normal G.O.P. administration (Rubio and Senator Tom Cotton would fall into this category, as would a dark horse like Gov. Glenn Youngkin);
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And Trumpist/populist picks, where Trump is choosing based on some combination of personal loyalty and ideological affinity (Senator J.D. Vance is the leading contender in this category).
David French: Ross raises a question that goes beyond this election. How much does Donald Trump represent an interruption of Reagan Republicanism versus its total disruption?
Patrick: How would the V.P. pick help answer that question?
David: Selecting Tom Cotton would be a strong signal that he knows that normie Republicans are still indispensable to his coalition. Selecting J.D. Vance would send a very different message. Vance is perhaps populism’s most eloquent voice, and choosing him would signal that this is most definitely not your father’s G.O.P. A Rubio choice would split the difference. He’s had a populist conversion, but few people put him in the same category as Vance — either as a matter of conviction or persuasion for populist causes.
There is one thing I do wonder about Vance. While he’s plainly loyal to Trump, his selection as V.P. would make him such an obvious heir to the MAGA throne that I wonder if his rising star would irritate Trump. In fact, I wonder if one reason Burgum reportedly remains in the mix is that he’s so plainly a nonfactor, someone who would never take any shine from Trump himself.
Ross: Yes, the aspect of Trump’s personality that cannot imagine anyone succeeding him might incline him to pick a running mate who would be completely in his shadow. Burgum would be the obvious option, Stefanik to some extent, and even Scott seems eager to give up any identity of his own. Whereas Rubio and Cotton and Vance, in different ways, are stronger “brands” who might be contenders in 2028 or 2032 even without Trump’s imprimatur —— which might make them seem more threatening to his ego, more potentially disloyal.
Michelle Goldberg: I see what Ross is saying about Vance, but I don’t think Trump could conceive of him as a distinct brand, especially since more than any of the other candidates he owes his political career to Trump. Out of all the potential candidates, he’s the one who I think could do the most damage if he actually made it into the White House, because he’s such an unprincipled climber and seems to be willing to say anything to get ahead. When most people thought Trump was just going to be a blip, Vance reportedly wondered if Trump would be “America’s Hitler.” Now that he’s a V.P. contender, Vance told Ross that Mike Pence could have justifiably tried to subvert Biden’s election. He’s a completely amoral sycophant without an independent political base, which I think is what Trump is probably looking for.
Bret: We’re having this conversation under the working assumption that some kind of intellectual rigor governs Trump’s choices. But he’s an instinctual politician, fully capable of making important decisions because he likes the way someone looks or dresses. That’s one reason we ended up with Rex Tillerson as his first secretary of state. Trump’s priorities, in no particular order, will be: Is he loyal? Is he handsome? Does he outshine me? Has he always said nice things about me? (That would disqualify Vance and Rubio.) By the way, I keep saying “he” because I think he’ll choose a man, just because it’s another way of signaling his disdain for contemporary norms.
Which makes me wonder if it’s going to be Cotton, the former New York Times guest essay writer.
Michelle: Bret, I don’t think it will be Cotton for two reasons. First, he doesn’t look the part; some of Trump’s juvenile insults about Adam Schiff’s appearance also apply to the Arkansas senator. And second, Cotton has his own foreign policy agenda: He’s way more hawkish than Trump is, and parts of Trump’s pitch, however disingenuous, is that he’ll keep America out of forever wars.
If Trump is elected, he clearly plans to sell out Ukraine. Cotton has tried to gloss over Trump’s position, telling Fox News that the ex-president “had a strong relationship when he was in office with President Zelensky.” (Actually, he allegedly tried to extort him.) But the gulf between the two men is real.
David: He also likes a show, so we shouldn’t necessarily be surprised if the pick is someone we haven’t discussed at all. I do agree that it’s a mistake to ascribe any kind of conventional political consultant analysis to Trump’s decision-making, but the Pence pick in 2016 is instructive. It demonstrated that he knew of a potential political weakness (in this case, anxious evangelicals) and took steps to address it, but he’s also much more confident of his command of the G.O.P. He knows that he can do virtually anything without shaking even his evangelical support. So this pick may tell us more about the kind of person he wants in his administration than it does about his political strategy in the election.
Ross: Trump loves a zealous convert or bended-knee supplicant as much as he loves a loyalist, which is why Vance and Rubio are in the running notwithstanding their past anti-Trumpism.
Patrick: Trump does love putting loyalty tests to people and axing them if they don’t submit, like James Comey.
Ross: I agree with David that the pick of Pence showed real political calculation and that we should assume that the choice this time will have some kind of internal logic as well. One interesting question is about Trump’s own confidence in his prospects at the moment.
Patrick: I think he’s feeling quite bullish about his chances in November. But that was also the case right before the 2020 election.
Ross: The more Trump assumes that he’s on the track to win no matter what, the more likely he is to either pick someone nonthreateningly loyal (Burgum?) or ideologically attuned (Vance?). The more that he thinks the election is actually a 50-50 proposition, the more he might listen to the advisers who want him to pick, say, Rubio, or consider someone like Youngkin or even Nikki Haley who would — at least notionally — represent a kind of reassurance.
Bret: I’d be happy to be proved wrong, but I think Haley is too threatening to his ego, too independent, and her barbs from the primary season are too fresh. As for someone like Elise Stefanik, the New York congresswoman, she’s a nonstarter for reasons explained to me by a person who has known Trump for decades: “She needs to lose 30 lbs.” Horrible? I know. But this is Trump we’re talking about.
Ross: Trump could have picked a woman, but the fiery disasters of Kristi Noem’s dog-killing story and Katie Britt’s State of the Union response probably knocked out the two contenders who came closest to fitting the part.
David: Ross, I’m glad you raised the dog story. It’s a reminder that the normal rules of politics still apply to every politician not named Donald Trump. Gaffes and scandals can still destroy political careers. Trump’s risk in naming a hard-core MAGA loyalist is that all the weirdness and extremism of MAGA will stick to him, even if it doesn’t stick to Trump.
Patrick: Ticket-balancing with a female running mate would indeed suggest the kind of intelligible logic of politics that Bret is skeptical about in Trump’s thinking (and I am, too). Yet I want to pick up on Ross’s point about Trump’s electoral prospects in the fall and how that relates to the V.P. pick. Could any of these possible V.P. picks plausibly help Trump electorally in the November election? In which states, or with which groups of voters?
David: Honestly, it’s hard for me to see any of these potential picks making a real difference, at least beyond the initial news cycle. Trump is the central figure in this election, and that’s not going to change. In addition, while I don’t think this is fair at all, there is a perception that Trump is less impaired by age than Biden, and there is less of a sense that he won’t finish out his term. For that reason, the Trump pick feels lower stakes to many folks. I live in the heart of MAGA country, and the Trump V.P. pick is something people are talking about online, not in real life.
Ross: I don’t think it will matter much in MAGA country, but I actually do think it makes a difference (on the margin, yes, but that’s where all elections are settled nowadays). Not just Trump’s age but the fact that he’s already had four years will make people think about this V.P. pick more as a potential president than usual, especially since people will be thinking the same thing about Kamala Harris, making the V.P. debate unusually significant. Given the general air of mystery around a Trump second term — who will staff it? what will he actually do? — the pick will be seen as a strong signal of how some of those questions will be answered. And Trump still has something to gain from reassuring voters that he’ll operate within the normal parameters of American politics, which is why a half-establishment, half-populist figure like Rubio can seem like a logical choice, though probably not the choice I would actually predict.
Patrick: This may sound like I’m rewording the last question, but there’s a difference: Which Trump V.P. pick might pose the most danger electorally to Biden, if any? Vance and Rubio, in different ways, could have real appeal in Pennsylvania, and to some degree in Arizona and Nevada — not decisive, but on those all-important margins that Ross mentioned. I have a harder time seeing Burgum being much of a threat to Biden.
Bret: Rubio — assuming the potential constitutional issues can be dealt with by moving a sitting senator from Florida to a different state. Trump knows he has a historic opportunity to bring Hispanic voters to the G.O.P. in much larger numbers than we’ve ever seen before. I realize that a Cuban American has a more limited claim on Hispanic voters from, say, Mexican or South American backgrounds, but that appeal will still be strong. He also represents the aspirational appeal and reform-minded instincts of the old G.O.P., which is what made him appealing to voters like me when he ran in 2016.
Ross: Trump is more likely to lose Michigan or Pennsylvania than Florida or Arizona, which would seem to make a Midwesterner like Vance a likelier geography/Electoral College pick than Rubio. But I don’t think we know enough about Vance’s ability to do outreach politics to make that kind of bet.
Bret: A brief interjection here: Vance isn’t good looking enough for Trump. He looks like a forgotten Civil War brigadier.
Ross: What are you trying to say about populist-leaning Catholic converts with beards disguising their baby faces, Bret?
David: Look, Bret, on behalf of appearance-challenged men everywhere, I’d just note the beard helps!
Bret: The beard’s not the problem. It just isn’t the solution, either.
David: As to Patrick’s question, I think the answer is two people we’ve barely mentioned — either Tim Scott or Nikki Haley — would be more helpful to Trump. A Scott selection could continue the ongoing racial realignment in American politics, sending a signal to Black men in particular that they have a home in the Republican Party. A Haley selection has the potential of clawing back at least some of the traditional Republican voters who’ve migrated to the Democratic Party (plus, it would outrage and demoralize quite a few anti-Trump conservatives, something Trump loves to do).
I could be proved wrong quite quickly, but I remain skeptical at Rubio’s chances, in particular because he flamed out so spectacularly in 2016, and if the V.P. nominee’s most important role in the election is winning a debate with Kamala Harris, then that argues against Rubio and perhaps for Vance.
Ross: If Trump picks Vance, it will be in no small part because he’s good at arguing on television. Whether voters really like politicians who are good at arguing on television is another question. And I agree that Trump could use a running mate who helps with African American voters, but I’m a little skeptical that Scott is actually the right kind of politician to make that appeal.
Michelle: Really? Out of all the plausible candidates, Scott is the one who I think would pose the biggest threat to the Biden/Harris ticket. Biden is already relatively weak with Black men, and Scott would be a useful ambassador to them. And unlike, say, Vance or Cotton, he comes across as a genial, unthreatening person, not an authoritarian weirdo.
Bret: To a typical Republican voter, a Scott pick just smacks of an affirmative action pick — the very thing they reject. There’s also an unappealing toadyism to him that came across badly with his “I just love you” interjection after he dropped out of the race to endorse Trump. Also, the Black vote isn’t in play the way the Hispanic vote is. I just don’t see it.
Ross: Michelle, I can see Scott helping Trump with some of the same voters that might be reassured by a Rubio or even a Haley pick: swing voters who lean Republican but don’t want to vote for, as you say, authoritarian weirdos. But as I read the polls, some of the African American voters who are leaning toward Trump seem to like him more than they like or identify with the institutional G.O.P. (That may help explain why Trump is currently outperforming G.O.P. Senate candidates in some polls.) And Scott just always seems like a pure G.O.P. institutionalist, a donor-friendly Mr. Republican who happens to be African American — when to really seal the deal with Trump-friendly minority voters, you’d want an African American running mate with a more independent, less Republican-specific brand.
But I could be mistaken!
Michelle: Maybe, but I think it’s simpler than that. One big knock on Trump is that he’s a racist. Choosing a Black V.P. candidate would complicate that argument. Much of the MAGA base would love it because they’re eager for Black validators who will tell them that Democrats are the real racists. And for at least some disconnected voters, identity would matter.
David: Michelle is right about the MAGA base, and if Trump’s strength is in the less-engaged voters, they won’t know much, if anything, about Scott’s establishment identity. They will see, however, a racially diverse ticket, and that fact alone would immediately undermine Democratic allegations of Republican racism.
Patrick: What intrigues me about Tim Scott and many of the others — probably aside from Rubio — is how much they have been championing and defending Trump while also prostrating themselves before him, such as repeating some of his stolen-election lies or refusing to say Trump should accept the 2024 results. It makes me wonder if most if not all of the Trump V.P. picks would understand, and would behave, in accordance with Rule 1: Do anything Trump wants, followed quickly by Rule 2: Be prepared for Trump to undermine you even if you do what he wants.
To that end, Ross, I wanted to circle back to your point about how Trump sabotaged Mike Pence and the likelihood that, at some point, he would turn on his running mate, too. Can we say, sitting here now, that the only certainty about the Trump V.P. pick is that he or she will ultimately become political roadkill? That being Trump’s vice president will only drag a person down? That you will not come away from being V.P. in a stronger position politically, with a better image than you started with?
Ross: I don’t think the specific doom of Pence is likely to be repeated, because in that case Trump was picking someone who was clearly never in tune with Trumpism; the tensions were there from the beginning, and what happened around Jan. 6 was just their long-fated working out. With this roster of potential picks, especially if you exclude long shots like Haley, you’re more likely to see a doom where they never break with Trump, even through chaos or disaster or constitutional crisis, and sticking by him becomes the thing that’s fatal to their post-Trump prospects, which, in a way, is the more conventional way for vice presidents to fail to become presidents.
But the core question of whether any normal-ish Republican politician can actually “succeed” a figure like Trump is going to be really interesting even if there isn’t some intervening crisis or disaster.
Michelle: Patrick, it’s fascinating that you single out Rubio as the least craven of the contenders, when just last month he was repeating stolen-election conspiracy theories and refusing to commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election. It shows how low the bar is!
Big picture, a politician can benefit from their association with Trump to the extent that they have zero principles of their own. High-profile Trumpworld figures like Jeff Sessions and Mike Pence had lines that they wouldn’t cross, and it doomed them. I haven’t seen any reason to believe that Vance has such lines.
Bret: Love, as the saying goes, makes you do crazy things. Power makes you do crazier things. And Trump, at least if you happen to be a Republican, makes you do the craziest things of all.
David: Bret is exactly right. If the last nine years have taught us anything, it’s that there is an endless supply of Republican politicians — including the party’s brightest stars — who are not just willing, but eager to be the next potential public sacrifice for Donald Trump’s political ambitions. They always seem to think that they’ll be different.
Michelle: But Ross may be right about the dangers of being associated with Trump. If, God help us, he’s re-elected, he’s going to be spectacularly unpopular after four years, because the more people see him the less they like him, and because people will recoil from things like mass deportation and internment camps if Trump were to ever put them into practice. In retrospect, the so-called adults in the room from Trump’s first term did us all a disservice by saving him from his worst impulses, and thus giving many voters a false sense of security about what he’s capable of.
After another term, I can see the Republican Party wanting to memory-hole their slavish capitulation to him, much the way they’ve memory-holed their worship of George W. Bush. If that happens, Vance might seem like an embarrassment.
Then again, speculating about public opinion assumes that democracy survives another Trump presidency!
