Donald Trump’s 2016 candidacy was unusual in a great many ways, but there was one part of his resume that stood out as extraordinary. Up until January 2017, literally every president in American history had at least some experience in public office, military service, or both.
Trump was unique: Before his inauguration, the Republican had never served the public in any capacity. Nevertheless, 46% of the American electorate elevated the former television personality to the nation’s highest and most powerful office.
Soon after, the political world confronted a set of circumstances without precedent, at least in the United States: The head of the executive branch in the world’s preeminent superpower didn’t know the basics of how government worked. He sought the presidency without bothering to learn about his own country’s political structures and then arrived in the Oval Office with a child-like understanding of civic affairs.
We know this, not just because of Trump’s many failures, but because people close to him have said so on the record.
“I’m telling you, he didn’t know anything about government,” former House Speaker Paul Ryan told Politico’s Tim Alberta in 2019. “I wanted to scold him all the time.”
Five years later, Trump found himself in the market for a new running mate. The former president chose a young man whose political career is measured in months, not years. Fox News’ Brit Hume told viewers on Monday:
“[Vance] is 39 years old, yes. He is very smart. His inexperience is real. Don Jr. is wrong when he says experience is not important. It’s very important, and he has very little of it. People are looking at him and saying, is this guy a plausible president? You could argue that he is but also argue that he is not.”
The details are striking. While most modern running mates have extensive experience in elected office, Vance’s political career began literally last year.
The Ohio senator is the least experienced vice presidential nominee for either party in nearly nine decades. (In 1936, newspaper publisher Frank Knox, who had no background in elected office, joined Alf Landon’s Republican ticket. They soon after lost 46 out of 48 states.) Vance was recently asked about his greatest accomplishment on Capitol Hill, and he pointed to funding in an infrastructure bill he voted against. For Trump, none of this seems to matter. Indeed, if he were principally concerned about qualifications for national office, he wouldn’t have run in the first place. For the Republican Party, the pairing of the least experienced president and the least experienced running mate of the modern era also doesn’t much matter, largely because the contemporary GOP is a post-policy party, indifferent toward governing and policymaking. Looking ahead, the question is whether mainstream American voters are still similarly indifferent.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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