JD Vance reinforced the stereotype that the U.S. Vice President does nothing by asserting that it is a great time to raise a newborn. Apparently, JD has cracked the code on modern parenting: be vice president, surround your family with taxpayer-funded security professionals, and then marvel at how manageable everything feels.
Vance has spent years selling himself as a tribune of struggling families while enjoying a support system so rare that it comes with motorcades, advance teams, secure routes, and people whose job is to handle his family’s logistics. That is not “family values.” That is concierge parenting with a badge.
The class problem is the joke. Federal Reserve data released this year found that just 63% of adults could cover a $400 emergency expense with cash or its equivalent. Against that backdrop, a politician chuckling about the ease of life inside a Secret Service bubble sounds less like relatability and more like a man discovering that servants are convenient.
This comes at the same time the Daily Beast reports the Secret Service is fed up with ferrying around an inconsistent Veep who can’t keep a schedule.
There is a special kind of rich-guy stupid that comes along when privilege becomes invisible to the person soaking in it. Vance is not describing parenting. He is describing parenting after the state quietly removes the parts that make parenting hard: transportation, safety, scheduling, backup, and the terror of being one missed paycheck from disaster. No wonder it seems easy. The hard parts have uniforms.
Parenting is easy when the village has badges, radios, and a federal budget.
He's been "comfortably well off" for a long time. This is about a fleet of servants -- including a personal praetorian guard -- all paid for by the little people.
Go read the list of grievences in the Declaration of Independence.
Twain was right.
History sometimes *rhymes*.