The Message and the Messenger

JD Vance's controversial Munich speech was an example of the wrong person saying the right thing.

Vice President JD Vance’s address at the Munich Security Conference last week was a bit wild. Actually, it was savage, as

Damir Marusic

put it recently. You can read the full transcript here. The condemnations from American liberals and much of the mainstream media came fast and strong. This isn’t what an American vice president is supposed to do. In other words: norms. Although it’s becoming harder to tell whether norms are a means to an end or an end unto themselves.

Instead of talking about foreign policy, the Ukraine War or European security, Vance spoke about what he called the “threat within” — “the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.”

He excoriated Europeans for “simply [not liking] the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.” As readers will know, this is music to my ears. It’s not too dissimilar from key points I make in my book The Problem of Democracy, where I argue that democracy rightly understood is “the right to make the wrong choice.” And if you don't believe in that right — or if you constantly prioritize other aims over that right — then you can’t really be a democrat.

One example that Vance rightly highlighted is Romania’s recent cancellation of elections, something that should have sparked real outrage here in the United States but largely went unnoticed. Or, worse, it was noticed, but liberals simply didn’t care because the party that was about to win was right-wing populist. This is a classic case of a “democratic dilemma,” in which we say we believe in democracy in theory but don’t like its outcomes in practice. What do we do when democracy produces “bad” outcomes has long been, in my view, the fundamental problem of democracy. And we need to have answer for it.

But there’s a problem. While I might like the message in Munich, I disapprove of the messenger. To be sure, I don’t think that JD Vance is equivalent to Trump — I do appreciate, for example, that he writes up manifestos for tweets — but the fact of the matter is that he represents a president who has done odious things, including on the issues I most care about. It’s more than a bit ironic for Vance to lecture Europeans on respecting democratic outcomes, when his boss made very clear in 2020 that he doesn't respect democratic outcomes not to his liking either. But that doesn’t invalidate Vance’s point.

As difficult as it may be, we must be able to distinguish between the message and the messenger. Someone can be wrong but still say something right. The questionable source of a truth does not negate the truth in question. And Vance was correct. European powers turned a blind eye to a Romania’s annulment of the first round of election results in December, after the far-right politician Călin Georgescu surged in the final weeks of campaigning and won a plurality of the vote. This was the first time a member state annulled an election since the establishment of the European Union in 1993. In other words, this was, quite literally, unprecedented.

The ostensible pretext cited by Romania’s constitutional court was Russian interference. Similar to what Russia did, or tried to do, in our own U.S. elections in 2016, it appears that Russia bankrolled a social media influence campaign in favor of Georgescu. You might say: wait, that’s it? And, yes, that’s it. As the New York Times reported:

The intelligence documents released publicly by Romania provided no evidence of a Russian role, only the observation that “Russia has a history of interfering in the electoral processes of other states” and vague claims that what happened in Romania was “similar” to well-documented Russian election interference in neighboring Moldova.

The notion that Trump’s election win in 2016 should, or could, have been annulled by the Supreme Court would probably strike most Americans as odd (although undoubtedly some liberals would have rejoiced). Powerful individuals and nations try to influence other countries’ elections all the time — the U.S. does it fairly regularly — but the general consensus is that such knowledge can’t invalidate an election after the fact. After all, it’s not as if Russia tampered with the vote or forced any Romanians to vote for a far-right candidate. Those Romanians made a choice, which was their right, regardless of anything else.

In his address, Vance also raised the ongoing attack on free speech and the right of assembly and protest across Europe. In the United Kingdom, “buffer zones” legislation came into effect under the Public Order Act of 2023, which, as Vance noted, “criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility.” This also happens to be true, as hard as it may be to believe. As journalist

Madeleine Kearns

explains:

All of this legislation codifies — on a national level — a trend that has been creeping across the UK for a decade. Ten years ago, in 2014, Parliament empowered local councils to create and police their own antisocial behavior laws. The intention was to enhance “the professional capabilities and integrity of the police.” But since 2018, five UK districts have used these powers to aggressively limit what people can do, say, and even think, near abortion clinics.

So, yes, this is happening in Europe as we speak. And Vance was right to call it out — and it was good that he did so in a high-profile speech in front of some of Europe’s most prominent officials and politicians.

I wish such much-needed criticisms of European hypocrisy might have come from someone other than JD Vance. Again, a top Trump administration official doesn’t have much credibility when it comes to either free speech or democracy. But we can’t let our dislike of Trump cloud our analysis or our judgment.

The fact of the matter is that a Democratic politician didn’t go to Munich and speak hard truths to European politicians — and it’s hard to even imagine someone like Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, or John Kerry saying anything similar. After all, that would have been “disrespectful” to our European allies — and what could be more important than saying the right things at the right moments and taking care not to cause offense even when it’s warranted?

In this sense, the message and messenger can’t entirely be separated. Only someone who couldn’t care less about norms or deference to allies could have said what needed to be said to the people who needed to hear it.

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