#2 GUY IN WORST PRESIDENCY EVER STILL GETS NO BLAME FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

You and I know that J.D. Vance is second-in-command to the worst president in American history -- possibly the worst human being in American history -- and thus should be held partly accountable for that presidency's many, many failures. The notion that Vance could successfully run for president in 2028 should be as unthinkable now as the notion that Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney could run to succeed George W. Bush would have been in Bush's last couple of years in office, when an understanding of his failures had become widespread across the political spectrum.

But this time is different. Our political culture doesn't blame Vance for Donald Trump's failures. You can see that in The New York Times, which is ready to tell us that a Vance presidency will be a fresh start.

How do we know that the Times sees Vance in a positive light, or at least not a negative light? Take a look at one word in the headline to this story, by Tim Balk, about Vance's speech at the "Trumpapalooza" convention in Dallas:

Vance Assails Democrats in Fiery Speech at G.O.P. Convention

In the media, "fiery" is a positive word. It implies that your rhetoric is self-righteously angry, and that your targets might really deserve your attacks.

This is one of two stories in the Times about Vance's speech. The other story, by Tyler Pager, bears this headline:

Vance, Eying 2028, Relishes the Spotlight at Trump’s Convention

The vice president, widely seen as a potential White House candidate, sought to use his speech in Dallas to show a more personal side to the MAGA faithful.

In both of these stories, Vance is portrayed not as part of an executive branch that's failing in everything it's doing, but as a non-superstar politician trying to escape the shadow of a superstar politician. Pager writes:

Republicans say Mr. Vance, a onetime outspoken critic of Mr. Trump who later turned into a staunch supporter, remains the undisputed front-runner for the party’s presidential nomination — at one point, the crowd started chanting “48,” a reference to the 48th president. But they acknowledge he has work to do to consolidate support from Mr. Trump’s base, especially those who do not regularly vote or tune into politics.

“He has those relationships with the podcast hosts — Theo Von, Joe Rogan — who those guys listen to,” said Jack Posobiec, a far-right commentator and supporter of Mr. Vance. “The work that he’s going to have to do is convince them to come back in for 2028.”

Balk writes:

It was one of Mr. Vance’s most high-profile public appearances before the midterms and a potential run to succeed Mr. Trump in the White House. Mr. Vance was elevated to the vice presidency by Mr. Trump after just two years in the Senate, and is still seeking to define his own image.

The record of the Trump/Vance administration isn't something we should necessarily judge Vance on, Balk and Pager tell us. He can just wave it away. Pager writes:

In his remarks, Mr. Vance sidestepped most of the thorniest issues dragging down his party. He only obliquely referenced the Iran war. He made no mention of tariffs that have exacerbated voters’ economic concerns, and he did not address Mr. Trump’s gambit to give voters $5,000 if Republicans keep control of Congress.

Instead, Mr. Vance placed a heavy emphasis on his own personal story, speaking more about his wife than any candidate running for office. The vice president drew on the recent birth of his fourth child and the first anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s death. And he appeared to relish playing the role of attack dog, at times lobbing provocative barbs against Democrats and gleefully dismissing a protester who interrupted his speech.

Balk's version is this:

With Mr. Trump’s approval ratings sagging because of the war with Iran and rising prices, Mr. Vance avoided directly talking about the war but urged voters not to abandon the administration over policy disagreements. The vice president has cautiously defended the military campaign in public while privately questioning it.

Ahh, yes, the private questioning. This is a reference to a "Times exclusive" story that Vance strategically planted in the paper just before the convention:

Behind the Scenes, Vance Gathered Unvarnished Views of the Iran War

Vice President JD Vance took the unusual step over the spring and summer of calling U.S. military commanders in the Middle East, Europe and Asia directly, seeking their unvarnished assessments of the Iran war, according to current and former officials.

Mr. Vance, who opposed the war from the outset and was charged by President Trump with helping to end the conflict, wanted the commanders’ individual judgments, in their own words, before they were consolidated into a Pentagon view....

Mr. Vance came away from some of his conversations with deep concerns about the overall strategy and the prospects for success, according to people who spoke to him....

The vice president incorporated these lessons into his private talks with Mr. Trump and their inner circle.

As I said in the spring, the media is portraying Vance as a sort of Schrödinger's cat, "someone who's both on the Trump train and off it." On the war, he's a cheerleader but also a skeptic. He defends Trump but forms his judgments based on solid information rather than rah-rah AI-slop posts culled by Natalie Harp.

The key figures in the failed Bush administration couldn't run for president in 2008 because everyone knew the Bush presidency was a collaborative effort -- Bush never tried to conceal how heavily he relied on his advisers, even if he called himself "the decider." At this moment, in a presidency that's failing even more spectacularly than the Bush presidency, it's still plausible that Vance (or Marco Rubio) could be the nominee because all decisions are believed to be made by the president himself.

But why does that take Vance and Rubio off the hook? They're in the room with the president. If they disagree with him, they don't push back and they don't quit. If they agree with him, their judgment is as godawful as his.

They should be unelectable, not within shouting distance of likely Democratic nominees in pre-2028 polling. They're not pariahs largely because the mainstream media agrees that they aren't, and because they're stylistically different from Trump. That shouldn't allow them to escape judgment.