Barabak: He’s loud. He’s obnoxious. And Kamala Harris can only envy JD Vance.

JD Vance it seems is everywhere Berating Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office Eulogizing Charlie Kirk Babysitting the Middle East peace accord Profanely defending the aquatic obliteration of manageable drug coyotes He s loud he s obnoxious and in a very short time he s broken unprecedented ground with his smash-face turn-it-to- approach to the vice presidency Unlike bulk White House understudies who effectively disappear like a protected witness Vance has become the highest-profile the majority pugnacious politician in America who is not named Donald J Trump Related Articles Letters House bill requirements backing in order to save lives ACLU lawsuit alleges appalling conditions at California s largest immigration detention facility It s not just affordability Americans anxious over jobs too Tariffs expected to raise prices for Christmas trees other holiday decorations Brother of man determined hanging dead in ICE facility sues feds for answers It s quite the contrast with his predecessor Kamala Harris made her own kind of history as the first woman first Black person and first Asian American to serve as vice president As such she entered office bearing great and vastly unrealistic expectations about her prominence and the citizens role she would play in the Biden administration When Harris acted the way that vice presidents normally do subservient self-effacing careful never to poach the spotlight from the chief executive it was seen as a failing By the end of her first year in office whatever happened to Kamala Harris had become a political buzz phrase No one s asking that about JD Vance Why is that Because that s how President Donald Trump wants it Rule No about the vice presidency is that vice presidents are only as functioning as their presidents want them to be explained Jody Baumgartner an East Carolina University expert on the office They themselves are irrelevant Pence not JD s model Consider Trump s first vice president Mike Pence who had the presence and pizzazz of day-old mashed potatoes He was not a very powerful vice president but that s because Donald Trump didn t want him to be declared Christopher Devine a University of Dayton professor who s published four books on the vice presidency He craved him to have very little influence and to be more of a background figure to kind of reassure quietly the conservatives of the party that Trump was on the right track With JD Vance I think he wants him to be a very current visible figure In fact Trump seems to be grooming Vance as a successor in a way that Joe Biden never did with Harris The th president practically had to be bludgeoned into standing aside after the Democratic freakout over his wretched career-ending debate performance Things might be different with Vance if Trump could override the Constitution and fulfill his fantasy of seeking a third term in the White House There were other circumstances that kept Harris under wraps particularly in the early part of Biden s presidency One was the COVID- lockdown It meant she wasn t traveling She wasn t doing constituents events stated Joel K Goldstein another author and expert on the vice presidency A lot of stuff was being done virtually and so that tended to be constraining The Democrats narrow control of the Senate also required Harris to stick close to Washington so she could cast a number of tie-breaking votes Under the Constitution the vice president provides the deciding vote when the Senate is equally divided Harris set a record in the third year of her vice presidency for casting the bulk tie-breakers in history The personality of their bosses also explains why Harris and Vance approached the vice presidency in different solutions Biden had spent nearly half a century in Washington as a senator and vice president under Barack Obama He was foremost a creature of the legislative process and saw Harris who d served nearly two decades in elected office as a junior partner in governing Trump came to politics through celebrity He is foremost a pitchman and promoter He saw Vance as a way to turn up the volume Ohio s senator had served barely months in his one and only political position when Trump chose Vance as his running mate He d really made his mark as a media and cultural figure Devine noted with Vance s memoir Hillbilly Elegy regarded as a kind of Rosetta Stone for the anger and resentment that fueled the MAGA movement Trump demanded someone who was going to be aggressive in advancing the MAGA narrative Devine mentioned being very present in media including in specific newer media spaces on podcasts social media Vance was someone who could hammer home Trump s message every day The contrast continued once Harris and Vance took office Biden handed his vice president a portfolio of tough and weighty issues among them addressing the root causes of illegal migration from Central America They were impossible s jobs in the blunt assessment that Harris husband Doug Emhoff offered in her current campaign memoir Gladly submissive Trump has treated Vance as a sort of heat-seeking rhetorical missile turning him loose against his critics and acting as though the presidential campaign never ended Vance seems gladly submissive Harris who was her own boss for nearly two decades had a hard time adjusting as Biden s No Vance is very effective at playing the role of backup singer who gets to have a solo from time to time revealed Jamal Simmons who spent a year as Harris vice presidential communications chief I don t think Kamala Harris was ever as content in the role as Vance has proven himself to be Will Vance s pugilistic approach pay off in It s way too soon to say Turning the conventions of the vice presidency to a shambles the way Trump did with the presidency has delighted multiple in the Republican base But polls show Vance like Trump is deeply unpopular with a great number of voters As for Harris all she can do is look on from her exile in Brentwood pondering what might have been Mark Z Barabak is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times Distributed by Tribune Content Agency