Will The Pugilist Rest?

JD Vance, nastiness, and the power of the no asshole rule

In the chapter of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker titled, “The Candidate,” Caro provides this description of how Robert Moses, answering a question on whether he was a protégé of the Old Guard, turned the New York press corps against him as he ran for governor:

Jumping to his feet, jabbing his finger at the reporter who asked the question, he “heatedly” declared, ‘Nobody has any strings on me! Did you ask him if he was a protégé of Tammany Hall?’ In what the World-Telegram called a “display of temper,” he began lecturing reporters on how to do their job and then “announced belligerently that he would ‘not take laying down anything said against him.’

Cutting to the quick, one notable reason why the people of New York didn’t elect him governor was because of his personality. He was seen as clear violator of Bob Sutton’s famous no asshole rule. New Yorkers just didn't like him.

JD Vance should take notice of this. It is not an uncommon thread in American politics. Woman often (with merit) decry a sense of double standard when it comes to the personality test administered in US electoral politics. But the facts are that men are also subject to it. Sometimes it’s as simple as the public thinking, “this guy’s a prick.”

Phil Gramm comes to mind when I think of JD Vance. There were several nuggets in this New York Times profile that Vance might heed:

..From the earliest days of his political career, Gramm, 52, has been in a hurry -- and always in attack mode. In 1986, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York was so outraged by Gramm depicting him as weak on the military that he scolded Gramm: "You're one year in the Senate, fella, you don't do that to another Senator."

..This is a man who once sent a longtime foe, Representative Chet Edwards, a Democrat from Waco, a card that proclaimed, "I feel so sorry for your many problems, but you deserve them."

..Gramm delights in playing the bad boy. "One of the problems today is we have a President who wants desperately to be loved," he says. He once assured a dinner audience that he did have a heart, though. "I keep it in a quart jar on my desk."

We all know how the story ended. His national ambitions were DOA in large part due to his personality.

Perhaps an even more cautionary tale is the famous fight between Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich. (What is it about Texas politics-more than enough examples that I can pass on Ted Cruz). Wright was so famously disliked, that not only did it come back to bite him when he needed support the most from his party, he famously reached down, took off a shoe, and hurled it at Bob Torricelli when Torricelli (having drawn the short straw) informed Wright that he had lost Democratic support. Not a nice guy.

For Gingrich, it was in many ways a pyric victory. Success only shined a brighter light on his flaws. What makes the apocryphal story about him serving his wife divorce papers in a hospital while being treated for cancer so salient is that it was believable. He is the progenitor of the MAGA style of politics we see today-who truly embraced the idea of being nasty, as he noted in a speech in 1978:

The great strength of the Democratic Party in my lifetime has been that it has always produced young, nasty people who had no respect for their elders. Jimmy Carter, who, at 51 thought that Hubert Humphreys at 66 was over the hill. Jody Powell and Hamilton Jordan, who at 29 and 30 thought they could beat the pros. And I think that one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the camp fire, but are lousy in politics.

He would be hoisted on his own petard, but not without leaving a legacy we are still grappling with.

And perhaps that may be good enough for JD Vance-making the podium but not winning the gold? He way very well become president due to rules of succession, but without a change (if it’s possible?) to his general disposition and personality, I don’t think he can win via election (see Bob Sutton rule). Phil Gramm, Bob Dole, New Gingrich, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis…the list is long. Pugnaciousness only gets you so far-and usually with a high cost.

And that perhaps is the irony in all of this: Trump isn’t merely his patron, he is his halo. Strange times, indeed.