Alan Zendell, April 11, 2026

Some leaders grow into their roles, maturing and broadening their perspective as they age. They start out espousing naive philosophies and opinions, but life experiences lead them in new directions. Probably the best example, during my lifetime, was Lyndon Johnson. As a young politician in Texas, and later, as a Congressman, he supported the New Deal and President Franklin Roosevelt, but he was also a southern Democrat who supported segregation and opposed civil rights legislation. As a Senator, he maintained his stance against integration while strongly supporting Texas’ oil and gas industry and was a bipartisan leader during the Eisenhower administration.

When Johnson succeeded John F. Kennedy as president, there was trepidation among Democrats that right-wing southerners would dominate the party and the White House. But Johnson instead became the steward of the Great Society movement that included passing the Civil Rights and Social Security Acts, including initiating both Medicaid and Medicare. After supporting the expansion of the Vietnam War, and condoning the fraudulent Gulf of Tonkin incident that solidified popular support for the war, Johnson came to realize what a terrible error that was and dropped out of the 1968 presidential race. Lyndon Johnson proved that given the opportunity, hard core, ambitious politicians can evolve toward governing for all Americans and acknowledge when they’re wrong.

But Johnson was a rare bird. Far more common are politicians and influencers who are motivated by opportunism rather than ideology or principle. Notorious right-wing conservative Rush Limbaugh was one such, who had no ideology of his own until he seized on the rising trend of reactionary politics that was anti-everything liberal, including women’s rights, welfare, and equal opportunity, as a way to acquire influence and wealth.

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell is credited with stacking district and appellate courts with right-wing judges and famously said at the beginning of Barrack Obama’s presidency, “My job as Senate Majority Leader is to assure that Obama fails.” In later years, McConnell told interviewers that his core principles had nothing to do with right-wing extremism, that he was motivated solely by finding a path to maximize his personal power. In his dotage, as he approached retirement and diminished capacity, he has expressed regret that his efforts resulted in helping Donald Trump rise to power.

Why are Johnson, Limbaugh, and McConnell relevant today? Because all the above raises similar questions about JD Vance, Trump’s Vice President who has taken over negotiations with Iran from the grossly unqualified Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. How Vance handles the tough, smart Iranians in Islamabad will make or break his ambition to succeed Donald Trump as the leader of the MAGA movement, and as president. Vance is someone whose major life decisions have been largely opportunistic.

He’s a really smart guy. You have to be to graduate from Yale Law School, notwithstanding that many of us wondered how George W. Bush managed the same accomplishment. What Vance has demonstrated more than anything else during his brief career, (he’s only 41,) is ambition, guts, and a keen ability to align himself with people like billionaire Peter Thiel who saw great potential in Vance and helped him win election to the Senate and the Vice Presidency. It’s been widely reported, and not denied by Vance, that he was not originally a supporter of Donald Trump or the Christian Nationalist movement Trump coopted from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

But Vance seems almost matchless in his ability to adapt to situations –  he can change his stripes as easily as donning a new tie to match Trump’s. In the current environment, in which it’s been leaked that Vance does not support the war in Iran, and Americans are realizing their error in giving Donald Trump what he believes is a mandate for an unfettered second term, I hear people debate one question every day. Would America be better off if Trump were removed from office and replaced by Vance? More often than not, people fear Vance, believing he’s more dangerous because he’s smarter than Trump and he generally behaves rationally even when he expresses radical views.

They fear MAGA in the hands of Vance would be worse than it is now, but I disagree. Movements like MAGA only succeed long-term with a hypnotic leader at the helm, someone with the charisma of a cobra, paired with extreme narcissism, greed, and sociopathy, in other words, Donald Trump. MAGA needs that to be viable post-Trump, but Vance does not check any of those boxes.

Vance is a mysterious black box. He is extremely talented at adapting to situations and seizing opportunities. He seems undaunted by criticism or opposition and gives every appearance of being the hardest worker in the administration. He is also very good a being loyal to whomever he needs to be to get ahead, but it’s impossible to know where he might come down on policy issues if given the power he obviously craves.

Vance has no credible experience with negotiations, but I suspect he will turn out to be talented in that regard. He’s good on his feet, always confident, and never at a loss for a response to tough questions. In his present role leading negotiations with Iran in the middle of a misguided war Trump is drowning in, he may display talents we didn’t know he had. The question is, if he finds himself succeeding in wresting concessions from tough Iranian negotiators, will he decide that it’s safe to stray from Trump’s insane daily-changing agenda. And if he does, which version of JD Vance will emerge?

I have no idea if Vance or anyone else can be successful in undoing the mess created by Trump. But I believe that negotiations in Pakistan will affect far more than the war. They could influence American politics for decades. Vance is only 41.