When President Donald J. Trump picked Ohio’s Republican Sen. James D. “JD” Vance to be his running mate, he opened up the possibility of Vance becoming the first Marine to serve in the Nation’s second highest office.
Vance is the first veteran on a national ticket since Navy veteran Arizona’s Republican Sen. John S. McCain III.
His nomination also marks a generation milestone, as American politics has often been dominated by veterans from the same ear, who all came of age and served together.
READ MORE: BREAKING: Trump Announces VP Pick
McCain, along with President George W. Bush and former Secretary of State John F. Kerry, were the last Vietnam veterans to run for president. Vance marks the coming of age of the veterans from the Global War on Terror, which involved nearly two decades of counterinsurgency deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other hot spots, some of which they told us about and some of which they did not.
In his 2016 opus, “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance wrote about what the Marines meant to him and how it gave him the tools to step outside the expectations programmed into him by his hometown of Middletown, Ohio:
For all my grandma’s efforts, for all of her “You can do anything; don’t be like those f***ers who think the deck is stacked against them” diatribes, the message had only partially set in before I enlisted. Surrounding me was another message: that I and the people like me weren’t good enough; that the reason Middletown produced zero Ivy League graduates was some genetic or character defect. I couldn’t possibly see how destructive that mentality was until I escaped it. The Marine Corps replaced it with something else, something that loathes excuses. “Giving it my all” was a catchphrase, something heard in health or gym class. When I first ran three miles, mildly impressed with my mediocre twenty-five-minute time, a terrifying senior drill instructor greeted me at the finish line: “If you’re not puking, you’re lazy! Stop being f***ing lazy!” He then ordered me to sprint between him and a tree repeatedly. Just as I felt I might pass out, he relented. I was heaving, barely able to catch my breath. “That’s how you should feel at the end of every run!” he yelled. In the Marines, giving it your all was a way of life.
Vance enlisted in the Marine Corps between 2003 and 2007 and, for six months, deployed to Iraq with the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing as a photojournalist and public affairs noncommissioned officer.
The senator received his public affairs training at the Defense Information School, Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. The school, which also includes training for military personnel going into combat camera, equipment repair, and illustration and graphic design, has a wide collection of successful alumni, such as Adrian Cronauer, the deejay Robin Williams portrayed in “Good Morning, Vietnam”; Tony Dow, who played Wally Cleaver in “Leave It To Beaver;” Earl Woods, father of golfer Tiger Woods and film critic Gene Siskel.
If elected, Vance would be the third vice president to graduate from DINFOS, following in the footsteps of Walter F. Mondale and Albert A. Gore Jr.
This is an example of one of the photos the senator took, which is credited to Marine Cpl. James D. Hamel because then he was using his stepfather’s name.
Later, he changed his name to his grandparents’ last name, Vance.
