What’s the Matter With JD Vance? (opens in new tab)

The first chapter of JD Vance’s Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, is titled “What’s the Matter with JD Vance?” It’s a reference to Thomas Frank’s 2004 What’s the Matter with Kansas?, but it’s also a fine question in and of itself, a question one asks with increasing urgency the further one gets in the book. On its face, Communion has all the hallmarks of the standard Politician Book: the kind of thing one writes in preparation for a presidential run, where one tells (or re-tells) one’s...