It’s been a long spring for JD Vance. President Donald Trump launched a war with Iran that Vance had previously argued against, then dispatched the Veep to a doomed weekend of ceasefire negotiations. An empty-handed Vance sought to spin his efforts on Fox News on Monday night. “They moved in our direction, which is why I think we would say that we had some good signs,” he said. “But they didn’t move far enough.”

What’s worse is that, towards the end of last week, Vance campaigned with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, even appearing with him at a rally in Budapest, only for Orbán to lose on Sunday night. It’s no surprise that some are saying the Vice President has the “reverse Midas touch”.

Back in Washington, rumors have swirled in recent weeks that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now Trump’s favored heir to the MAGA throne. From the outside, observers are left to read the tea leaves, knowing that Trump is notoriously mercurial, willing to pit advisers against one another and pour his stream of consciousness into the media. Is Vance’s stock falling?

The Iran war has been key to the Vice President and his position within the White House. Vance, according to a blockbuster New York Times report from last week, counseled Trump against launching the war ahead of the strikes on 28 February. He lay low during the war’s early days but dutifully supported his boss’s decision in public.

Since the agreement of a two-week ceasefire last week, it has seemed that Vance is back in the fold. But it’s tempting to wonder whether Trump stuck Vance with the task of negotiating a permanent ceasefire during talks in Islamabad, knowing the efforts were unlikely to succeed. Iran reportedly requested Vance lead the talks, assuming his anti-interventionist streak would give them a better shot. But with war raging in Lebanon, wildly divergent objectives, and Trump’s capriciousness, Vance was hardly likely to succeed.

On the other hand, Trump may be intentionally gifting Vance an opportunity. If the President sees Vance as his strongest heir, it stands to reason he’d want the VP, a Marine Corps veteran, to take ownership of “winning” the war and achieving peace. Trump still seems to believe he can walk away with a victory, one that will be convincing to the public, and that sending Vance may have given him a vote of confidence.

Does it matter that a long-term peace deal wasn’t agreed? Vance’s critics are taking victory laps now, but it depends on how and if the war actually ends ahead of 2028. Trump is fixated on curating the legacy of a peacemaker, so his incentive to land on a historic deal takes precedence over lowering gas prices ahead of the midterms. With no election for his own position in sight, he’s less anxious than other Republicans about November and more anxious about his place in history.

Rest assured, Trump, who’s already claimed victory repeatedly, will spin whatever deal is ultimately deemed acceptable as a world-historic win. If Vance remains the face of the negotiations, this will certainly reflect on him in 2028.

Vance emerges from the war, then, as a skeptic who has to defend his support for Trump despite campaign promises, and explain whatever polarizing deal is ultimately reached. His 2028 opponents could project criticisms of Trump onto the Vice President, using him as a stand-in without taking swipes at MAGA’s great protagonist.

But these are unpredictable times. Vance will undoubtedly lose some voters’ trust for backing this war after publicly warning against it before Trump’s second term. It’s possible that the President decides to anoint Rubio his successor in 2028, and Vance heads back to Ohio. What’s almost certain is that Trump is not sabotaging his own VP. The President is allergic to the optics of failure, although he doesn’t always seem to share the same definition of failure as voters. That problem could be what plagues Vance.

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Emily Jashinsky is UnHerd‘s Washington correspondent.

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