In the realm of American politics, we are often treated to a parade of characters who seem plucked straight from central casting. Take, for example, JD Vance, the self-styled chronicler of Appalachian woes and a man whose transformation from Trump critic to Trump acolyte rivals anything in the annals of political gymnastics. His pronouncements often echo with a kind of rustic charm that wouldn’t be out of place in a smoky, wood-paneled living room in Queens, circa 1973. Indeed, listening to Vance, one might be forgiven for checking to see if he’s cribbing lines from Archie Bunker, that irrepressible sage of the bigoted everyman.
Consider Vance’s plaintive lament about America’s decline: “We need a new national identity that rejects the politics of division and embraces what unites us.” Noble words, to be sure, but one can almost hear the ghost of Archie Bunker adding, “as long as ‘what unites us’ doesn’t include Meatheads and pinkos.”
Archie Bunker, for those too young or too forgetful, was the blustery, blue-collar patriarch of Norman Lear’s All in the Family. A man of simple prejudices and simpler solutions, Archie’s worldview was as black and white as his Zenith television set. “You are a meathead,” he famously declared, “dead from the neck up.” One imagines JD Vance, railing against the woke conspiracies of our time, would find a kindred spirit in Archie’s no-nonsense rhetoric.
Vance, in his critique of the coastal elite, proclaims, “The elites don’t care about us. They care about power and money.” Archie, of course, would have agreed wholeheartedly, though he might have added a more colorful epithet or two. “Those people in Washington don’t give a damn about the working man!” Archie would bark, with a gesture that suggested he might chuck a beer can at the TV for good measure.
Yet, while Vance couches his populist angst in the language of modern grievance politics, Archie’s bluntness had a way of cutting through the fog. When Vance says, “We need to stop the madness of our woke culture,” one can almost see Archie nodding sagely, thinking of the days when men were men and women were “dames” who knew their place.
And then there’s Vance’s riff on family values: “Strong families are the foundation of a strong nation.” An axiom that would have made Archie slap his knee in agreement, just before reminding Edith that the kitchen wasn’t going to clean itself. “A man’s home is his castle,” Archie would intone, missing the irony entirely.
But let us not forget Vance’s more colorful forays into gender politics. He recently mused about the plight of “Cat Moms” who, in his view, exemplify the failures of our societal priorities. “Young women are told that careers are more important than families, and they end up lonely, childless, and with a bunch of cats.” Archie would have found this sentiment both hilarious and spot-on. “See, Edith,” he’d crow, “this is what happens when dames start thinkin’ they’re the boss.”
Vance’s nostalgic yearning for an era when women stayed home rather than working is nothing short of a Bunkerism brought to life. “We need to support policies that encourage women to stay home and raise their children,” Vance declares, as though echoing a script penned for Archie himself. Archie, ever the traditionalist, would heartily approve, though perhaps in slightly less polite terms. “That’s right,” he’d say, “a woman’s place is in the home, not out there tryin’ to be some big-shot lawyer or politician.”
The difference, of course, lies in the era and the stakes. Archie Bunker’s prejudices were the stuff of comedy—a reflection of a bygone America grappling with its own identity. JD Vance’s utterances, on the other hand, are delivered with a straight face and a Senate seat in mind. The tragedy is not that Vance sounds like Archie Bunker; it’s that, in some quarters, he is taken seriously.
One cannot help but wonder: if JD Vance were to run for office in a time machine that landed him in the living room of 704 Hauser Street, would Archie Bunker vote for him? Or would he dismiss him as just another politician, full of highfalutin’ talk but ultimately as empty as an unfulfilled campaign promise? Given Archie’s disdain for pretension and his fondness for plain speaking, I suspect the latter.
As we trundle through this bizarre political landscape, it is both amusing and sobering to find that the more things change, the more they remain the same. JD Vance, with his down-home aphorisms and populist appeals, is but the latest in a long line of figures who remind us that, sometimes, politics is just a rerun of an old sitcom. Only this time, the laugh track is missing, and the stakes are infinitely higher.
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