Who had a worse week, Democrats or JD Vance? The Democratic Party’s progressive pooh-bahs spent last week trying to wash Graham Platner out of their hair after a woman he dated accused him of sexual assault. Democrats can only hope voters move on as quickly as they have.
The vice president, meantime, experienced a series of misfortunes reminiscent of the classic children’s book “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.”
The cease-fire he negotiated with the Iranian regime went up in smoke. His foreign policy of retreat and defeat took another blow after Russia banned diesel exports due to fuel shortages caused by Ukraine’s long-range strikes on its refineries. Then President Trump diverged from him by signaling increased support for Ukraine.
To cap it off, hedge-fund magnate Ken Griffin, a major Republican donor, said he’d favor Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a matchup between the two for the 2028 GOP presidential nomination. Oof. Unlike Alexander, the vice president’s travails are a result of his own doing.
Mr. Trump on Friday declared the cease-fire with Iran “over,” though the regime never abided by it anyway. The president said earlier in the week, “They violate the agreement every day. They lie. They cheat. They kill people.” Didn’t Mr. Vance herald peace in our time after negotiating the memorandum of understanding with Iran last month?
Apparently, he didn’t understand the regime with which he was negotiating. “I think that they see there’s a real opportunity here to turn over a new leaf so long as they do the right thing,” he said. “We have the cards, and if they don’t honor the commitment, we’ll figure out what to do when we get there.”
Now we’re there. It didn’t take long. The Iranians began firing at ships transiting through the Strait of Hormuz a week after the deal was signed. “Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa,” the agreement says.
As a real-estate developer, would Mr. Trump have ever leased a property on the condition that tenants “make arrangements” using their “best efforts” to pay rent—and only for 60 days?
Yet Mr. Vance insisted that the regime would understand that operating in good faith was in its best interest. “They want to have a much brighter future,” he said. But the regime’s vision of a brighter future entails nuclear weapons that allow it to control the region, not prosperity for its people.
Nonetheless, Mr. Vance projected optimism about “coalescing with both the hard-liners and the pragmatists behind the idea, not just that they want a peace deal now, but that 47 years of Iran policy toward the United States has been a mistake.” Reports last week of a new Iranian plot to assassinate Mr. Trump argue the contrary.
Iran’s leaders understood Mr. Vance’s aims better than the other way around. They knew Mr. Trump was losing patience with the war as midterm elections approached. They have squeezed the desperation to bring an end to the war for all it was worth. After the administration lifted its blockade and sanctions, the regime cranked up oil exports, which allowed it to rake in billions of dollars to finance its terrorism.
Mr. Vance might have expected such a result. In October 2024, he criticized the Biden team for easing sanctions on Iran and releasing restricted assets in the hope that doing so “would make the Iranians a better partner, would maybe get them a little bit more on the trajectory to being a reasonable country. That’s not happening. They’re just using that money to buy weapons that they launch against Americans.” Exactly.
In his new book, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” Mr. Vance derides “globalists” as “misinformed” and “naive.” He explains his opposition as a senator to military aid for Ukraine as a matter of realism: “The gap between Ukraine’s and Russia’s abilities to project military power was vast, and we lacked the capacity to enable the Ukrainians to close that gap—and keep it closed—all by ourselves.”
Nobody has argued that the U.S. on its own should prop up Ukraine. The Europeans have assisted mightily. Ukraine’s ability to push back Russia in recent months and hobble its energy infrastructure and military supply chains has undercut Mr. Vance’s thesis. Who’s naive and misinformed?
Equally naive and misinformed is his view that the government can revive a more traditional American culture with trade protection and industrial policy and by retreating from the world. Which may explain Mr. Griffin’s preference for Mr. Rubio.
Mr. Vance might dismiss Mr. Griffin as a “business elite” who “worships” the market, as he does other traditional Republicans. But Mr. Griffin represents a sizable share of Republicans whom the vice president alienates at his own political risk.
