Did J.D. Vance Dethrone Alan Dershowitz as the Alum who Most Embarrasses Yale Law School?
In January 2022, I learned that Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes was a Yale Law School graduate. That morsel kindled my curiosity: which alum most embarrasses YLS? I conducted an unscientific poll via Twitter in which I gave respondents four choices: Rhodes; Bill Clinton; Samuel Alito; and Alan Dershowitz. (Four was the maximum number of possible choices, so I had to omit other worthy potential contestants, like Clarence Thomas.) To my surprise, Dershowitz won not just a plurality but an outright majority. I wrote up my results in a kidding/not-kidding blog post.
Shortly thereafter, Dershowitz wrote an unintentionally hilarious response on the website of a Middle-East focused right-wing organization in which he: (a) asserted without a hint of irony that as a zealous advocate for his clients he was following in the footsteps of John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Clarence Darrow, and Thurgood Marshall; (b) attempted to discredit me by pointing out that Laurence Tribe--who was my mentor and then my co-author over thirty years earlier--has used harsh language to describe Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump; and (c) accused me of misrepresenting how he had responded to criticism for his having received a massage at Jeffrey Epstein's home.
Let's focus on that last point. In my 2022 blog post, I said that Dershowitz "famously kept his underwear on" during the massage at Epstein's residence. I linked a video in which Dershowitz said literally that. In his response, Dershowitz accused me of bad faith for failing to state that the massage he received was "a shoulder massage," but in my defense: (a) I had no idea that Dershowitz had also claimed at another point that he received only a shoulder massage, which he did not state in the video I linked; and (b) WTF??? Who gets a shoulder massage and then tries to make clear that it was innocent by pointing out that he kept his underwear on? Does anyone take their underwear off for a shoulder massage? Maybe when Dershowitz said he kept his "underwear" on, he meant he kept on his undershirt? But why would anyone care about that? The clear implication of "underwear on" as exoneration to a charge of having sex with a minor (which is what led to the video interview in the first place) is that it means underpants. So many questions remain unanswered.
And yet, my purpose today is not to litigate the burning question of exactly which items of clothing Alan Dershowitz wore or didn't wear while receiving a massage he claims to have not enjoyed very much and to have received from an adult woman at Jeffrey Epstein's house--fun as that would be. No, I come not to further mock Dershowitz (beyond what I've said already in today's essay) but to wonder whether he should cede his crown to J.D. Vance.
Last week, Professor Buchanan offered a litany of reasons why Vance so richly deserves to be Trump's running mate. Vance shares Trump's racism, disregard for the truth, opportunism, and casual cruelty. I urge readers who haven't done so to read that catalogue and Professor Buchanan's other Vance takedowns in the material he links.
During last night's debate, Vance worked very very very hard to project a softer image, beginning with his pink tie and including his efforts at procedural graciousness--expressing sympathy to Tim Walz upon learning that Walz's son had witnessed a school shooting and looking for common ground with Walz, even while taking every opportunity to criticize Vice President Harris.
If not exactly charming, Vance came across as more or less normal. Just as Keegan-Michael Key as the character Luther was President Obama's "anger translator," so Vance acted the part of Donald Trump's "not-crazy-and-demented-person translator." But only to a point.
Vance is obviously much smarter than Trump. He's also much better at lying--at least if the point of the lie is to deceive the audience into thinking that the speaker is telling the truth. With Trump, as with other autocrats, that's not necessarily the point of the lie. Trump's lies are so transparently false--e.g., every constitutional scholar wanted Roe v. Wade overturned; they're eating the pets; etc.--that one has the sense that their point is simply to render truth irrelevant. Vance is a more conventional dissembler in that he wants to be believed.
But he stumbled on the most fundamental question: why, despite his harshly (and astutely) negative assessment of Trump, did Vance change his mind? The obvious answer is that he didn't change his mind but that he's an ambitious opportunist and realized the way to get ahead in the Republican Party is to embrace Trump. His actual answer was far too slick: He said that he admits when he's proven wrong. That was partly a dig at Walz for Walz's having repeatedly stated falsely that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen uprising and massacre. (Walz was there a couple of months later.) But Vance's answer also makes no sense on its own terms. He had remained privately harshly critical of Trump as late as February 2020, so if Vance saw the light based on Trump's amazing performance as President, the performance that amazed Vance must have occurred after February 2020: it must have been Trump's wonderful handling of COVID or his spectacular insurrection. That's simply not believable.
Meanwhile, the core of Vance's substantive critique of Harris doubled down on a move Trump made during last month's Presidential debate. He asked why Harris didn't do all of the things she's now proposing during the three and a half years she has been Vice President. I suppose this line of attack is at least superficially appealing to a low-information voter who doesn't realize that: (a) a Vice President does not actually have any Executive power; or (b) given Joe Manchin's slavish devotion to the filibuster, even during the first two years of the Biden administration, when Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress, the Harris proposals that would require legislation were or would have been blocked by Republicans. Even with that obstacle, Biden (and thus derivatively Harris) got major legislation through Congress in those first two years. But this sort of nuance is way beyond what our hypothetical low-information voter impressed by Vance would understand.
By itself, Vance's stylistically polished but substantively problematic performance would not count as a major embarrassment for Yale Law School, thus seemingly permitting Dershowitz to retain the crown. But I suspect that a major factor in Dershowitz's victory in my 2022 poll was his association with Trump as his impeachment defense attorney and tv apologist. If so, however, Vance--by now being even more closely associated with Trump--could dethrone Dershowitz.
Perhaps the saving grace for Vance is that while he is very happy to profess fealty to Trump and support whatever platform Trump stands for on any given day, he pretty clearly doesn't actually believe any of what he says. Vance really is just a slick opportunist who has hitched his wagon to the Trump train.
Dershowitz is arguably the mirror image. He constantly boasts that as a lawyer he is merely representing a client, not identifying with that client, but this looks false. I'm sure Dershowitz finds some elements of Trumpism distasteful, but in recent years he has been much more comfortable speaking to right-wing audiences than even to centrist Democrats and recently announced that he has left the Democratic Party. The most charitable read of Dershowitz in the Trump era is that defending Trump is a way for Dershowitz to be on television. If that's accurate, though, he seems to be a greater embarrassment to Yale Law School than Vance. Each man is selling his soul, but Vance is doing so for a chance at the Vice Presidency and ultimately the Presidency, whereas Dershowitz is doing so merely for self-promotion.
To truly settle the question whether Vance has overtaken Dershowitz (and Alito, Thomas, Clinton, and Rhodes) as most embarrassing Yale Law School alum, I would have to launch another poll, but with so many serious problems in the world, I shall resist the urge to engage in such further frivolity.