It is an old joke in American politics that the vice president is one heartbeat away from the presidency, and yet is in every other way irrelevant. Other than a few largely ceremonial duties, the vice president’s only formal role is to break voting ties in the Senate.

It is a supposedly prestigious role, often gifted by a presidential candidate to someone who was their rival in the primary contest. But it is also a trap: everyone else in the Cabinet has an actual job to do. The vice president spends four years waiting to see if the president dies.

JD Vance , though, is an ambitious Vice President, and Donald Trump is a 79-year-old President who is in his second term, meaning that barring a change to the American constitution, he cannot run again. That means that Vance tries to be cons

See Full Page