Congratulations are in order to President Trump and his new running mate, J.D. Vance. Will their combination — and contrasts — prove to be a team that is even greater than the considerable sum of the parts? Mr. Vance has, once he found his footing in the Senate, been a spirited and articulate supporter of the 45th president. He will be the one to watch in a debate against Vice President Harris between now and November.

Yet President Trump and public intellectuals like Mr. Vance have precipitated a fierce struggle within the Republican party in respect of the war in Ukraine. Our instinct has been to support the stand Ukraine is making against Russia, but we have been disappointed by the failure of the Biden administration and the GOP writ large to articulate a strategy. Mr. Vance was nominated this afternoon to the tune of an anti-war ballad. Yet he is a hawk on Israel. 

We like that Mr. Vance was an enlisted man in the Marines, with whom he served as a combat correspondent in Iraq. This resonates with the editor of the Sun, who, as an Army enlisted man in Vietnam, covered combat for Pacific Stars and Stripes — and came to appreciate enormously our GIs and the wisdom they impart on the realities of war. It would be terrific to have a vice president who learned about war by listening to our soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

One thing that is unusual about Mr. Vance, a convert to Catholicism, is that he has lived the aphorism that culture is upstream from politics. He wrote a famous book and floated downstream into the Senate. His social policies fall short of the big tent Republicanism that President Reagan erected, and that proved a powerful and winning strategy, but he is a strong voice for the convictions of many voters who are committed conservatives.  

None of this can trump — pardon the expression — the biggest issue in the campaign, which is the economy. Will Mr. Vance’s brand of populism rhyme with Trump’s pursuit of tax cuts, more prudent spending, deregulation, and protecting the status of the American dollar as the world reserve currency? Our own hope is to find a leader who will pursue a strategy of restoring honest money convertible by law into gold. 

Which brings us to Mr. Vance’s assignment in the Senate to the Banking Committee. The banking committee is where monetary reform, meaning the campaign to fix what broke in the 1970s, has gone to die. It is disappointing that Mr. Vance failed to emerge as a tribune of honest money. He’s even spoken of devaluing the dollar. The optimist in us, though, sees a chance for leadership by the Senate of which he, as vice president, would be the president.

That, by the way, is an important point. If Mr. Vance is elected, he would be a member of the legislative branch. For years we have argued that it’s almost unconstitutional for the vice president to serve as a kind of deputy president and shirk his constitutional role as a member of the upper chamber. It would interest us were Mr. Vance to announce that he would maintain his office in what is known as the Vice President’s room at the Capitol.

In some ways Mr. Vance reminds us of another whippersnapper in the Senate who was tapped for glory. That would be Dan Quayle. He was much derided on the left, but proved to be a stalwart voice for a strong American foreign policy, particularly in respect of Israel, and an ardent advocate for family values — to the amusement of Hollywood — and he left after his term as vice president with the gratitude of millions.