2026年4月13日 美国东部时间下午6:56 / CNN
亚伦·布莱克 撰稿
2025年下半年，副总统杰德·万斯作为共和党下届总统候选人的前景看起来相当光明。这一态势在去年12月达到顶峰，当时潜在竞争对手、国务卿马可·卢比奥明确表示，若万斯参选，自己甚至不会发起挑战。
但自那以后，一系列事件——以及万斯的应对方式——让人们对这一可能性的质疑越来越多。其中就包括上周末的两起高调失败。
短短几天内，万斯先后被派往匈牙利为该国议会选举造势、前往巴基斯坦斡旋与伊朗的和平协议。
两次行动均以失败告终。
欧尔班的失利
欧尔班所在政党在本周末的选举中遭遇惨败。
特朗普政府已习惯于干预外国选举，且近期战绩相当亮眼。去年6月支持波兰大选获胜者，10月支持阿根廷大选获胜者，12月支持洪都拉斯大选获胜者，今年2月又支持了日本大选获胜者。
（值得注意的是，美国政府的外国干预往往还会附加筹码——比如向阿根廷选民承诺200亿美元救助金。）
但此次匈牙利之行却彻底搞砸了，尤其是考虑到特朗普政府此前多次高调介入，最终以万斯在选举前夕的高调访问收尾。
副总统杰德·万斯2026年4月12日在巴基斯坦伊斯兰堡会晤代表后出席新闻发布会。
杰奎琳·马丁/泳池摄影/美联社
当然，万斯抵达匈牙利前，欧尔班的民调支持率就已处于下风。万斯周一晚间在接受福克斯新闻采访时承认，政府当时就知道欧尔班“很有可能”落选，但他仍坚持前往，因为“支持这位长期以来坚定站在我们这边的盟友是正确之举”。
尽管副总统尽了最大努力，欧尔班对手佩特·毛焦尔所在的政党还是赢得了绝对多数席位。
这一结果提醒人们，无论特朗普多么看重万斯，万斯本人从未向选民展现出极强的吸引力或号召力。万斯在匈牙利的竞选演讲开场就直呼特朗普名字，第一次尝试联系总统时直接转入语音信箱，第二次才接通。
伊朗谈判受挫
另一起重大挫折发生在万斯访问伊斯兰堡斡旋结束伊朗战争的和平协议期间。
此前几天，美方看起来比伊朗方面更急于达成协议。而在停火协议生效数小时后，双方甚至连停火协议的具体条款都未能达成一致。
换言之，双方似乎并未就长期和平协议达成实质性接近。而此次谈判的直接结果也印证了这一点。
双方最终达成一致并非没有可能，万斯最终也可能在和平协议的起草中发挥重要作用，并借此宣扬自己的政治韧性。
但伊朗战争对万斯的政治抱负而言，正逐渐成为一个日益棘手的问题。
在以坚定的不干涉主义者形象树立个人声誉后，特朗普近几个月来采取了截然不同的外交政策。这不仅包括对伊朗开战，还包括他企图接管格陵兰岛、发动军事行动推翻委内瑞拉总统尼古拉斯·马杜罗等举措。
美国副总统杰德·万斯2026年4月11日在巴基斯坦伊斯兰堡与巴基斯坦总理夏巴兹·谢里夫就伊朗问题举行会谈。
杰奎琳·马丁/泳池摄影/路透社
万斯的应对方式则是，试图左右逢源。
不断有消息从政府内部传出，称万斯并未全心全意支持这场战争，他在公开场合的表态也格外谨慎。但他同时也坚称信任特朗普的判断。他最初反对这场战争，但也表示如果真要开战，就应该对伊朗给予重击。
这种策略看似不得罪人，但最终可能也讨不到多少好。
如果这场战争在政治上给共和党带来反噬，万斯能否通过辩称自己曾礼貌地私下提出反对来争取选民支持？如果战争在共和党选民中仍受欢迎，那么万斯的外交政策从一开始就似乎没有太多市场。
如今，他也实实在在地为一场目前看来充满风险且高度不可预测的战争承担了责任。
“所以，如果（和平协议）没能达成，我会怪罪杰德·万斯，”特朗普近日在一片笑声中打趣道，“如果达成了，我会全权揽功。”
这只是一句玩笑话，但其中或许暗藏几分真实。
随着特朗普进一步推行更具侵略性和军国主义色彩的外交政策，共和党未来有可能选择更契合这一路线的候选人。
两周前在保守派政治行动会议上的非官方民意调查中，立场更强硬的卢比奥支持率大幅攀升——从2025年的3%跃升至今年的35%，这绝非巧合。
万斯仍位居民调榜首，不过该调查不具备科学性，且仅针对保守派基础中规模虽小但热情高涨的一部分群体。但他的支持率已从61%降至53%，领先优势大幅缩小。
副总统职位的政治吸引力不言而喻；人们在思考下一届总统候选人时，首先想到的往往是现任副总统。
但这也意味着，副总统有时不得不与自己不愿扯上关系的事件绑定，还常常会接手一些对自己并无裨益的工作（看看卡玛拉·哈里斯就知道了）。他们也可能为自己几乎无法真正掌控的失败——乃至总统任期——承担指责。
如今，万斯正承受着大量这样的压力。这也提醒人们，在选举年一年前就下定论为时过早。
JD Vance had two high-profile opportunities to prove himself. Both fell flat
2026-04-13 6:56 PM ET / CNN
Analysis by Aaron Blake
In the latter half of 2025, Vice President JD Vance’s future as the next Republican presidential nominee was looking fairly promising. That culminated in December, when potential rival and Secretary of State Marco Rubio signaled he wouldn’t even challenge the VP if Vance ran.
But since then, events — and Vance’s handling of them — have raised more and more questions about that possibility. Including a pair of high-profile failures over the weekend.
In the span of just a few days, Vance was dispatched to stump for Hungarian President Viktor Orbán in his country’s parliamentary elections and to negotiate a peace deal with Iran in Pakistan.
Neither came close.
Orbán’s defeat
Orbán’s party was soundly beaten in this weekend’s elections.
The Trump administration has made a habit of involving itself in foreign elections, and it had a pretty strong track record recently. It supported the winners of elections in Poland in June, Argentina in October, Honduras in December and Japan in February.
(Making the foreign interventions more problematic, the administration also often put its thumb on the scale — like by dangling a $20 billion bailout in front of voters in Argentina.)
But it went very wrong in Hungary, especially given the Trump administration’s repeated and incredibly public intervention that concluded with Vance’s high-profile, election-eve visit.
Vice President JD Vance speaks during a news conference after meeting with representatives on April 12, 2026, in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AP
Of course, Orbán was down in the polls before Vance arrived. He acknowledged in an interview with Fox News on Monday night that the administration knew there was a “very good chance” that Orbán would lose, but said he went anyway because it was “the right thing to do, to stand behind a person who had stood by us for a very long time.”
Despite the vice president’s best efforts, the party of Orbán’s opponent, Péter Magyar, won a supermajority.
It served as a reminder that, however much Trump has invested in Vance, he’s never proved terribly exciting or compelling to voters in his own right. Vance opened his campaign speech in Hungary by calling Trump and was sent to voicemail before getting through to the president on a second try.
Iran negotiations
The other major setback came during Vance’s visit to Islamabad to negotiate a potential end to the Iran war.
In the days before, it looked like the administration was quite a bit more anxious to negotiate than the Iranians. And the two sides weren’t even able to agree on what the terms were of the ceasefire they had agreed to, hours after it began.
In other words, it didn’t appear the two sides were particularly close to agreeing on a long-term peace. And the immediate results of those talks support that assumption.
It’s certainly possible the two sides can eventually come together. And maybe Vance will ultimately have played a major role in crafting a peace deal that he can then hail as a signal of his political fortitude.
But the Iran war is an increasingly sizable problem for Vance’s aspirations.
After the vice president built a reputation for himself as a committed noninterventionist, Trump has in recent months set about a very different type of approach. That includes not just the Iran war but also his efforts to take over Greenland and the military operation that ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
US Vice President JD Vance meets with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for talks about Iran in Islamabad, Pakistan, on April 11, 2026.
Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/Reuters
Vance’s response has been to, well, try to have it both ways.
Word keeps leaking out of the administration that Vance hasn’t wholeheartedly supported the war, and he’s been remarkably careful about his public commentary. But he’s also insisted he trusts Trump’s judgment. He initially resisted the war, but also said if they were going to do it, they should hit Iran hard.
It’s an approach that seems calculated to alienate nobody, but that might ultimately please about the same number of people.
If the war backfires politically on Republicans, is Vance going to win people over by arguing that he politely and privately disagreed? And if it remains popular among Republicans, there wouldn’t seem to be much of a market for Vance’s foreign policy in the first place.
He’s also just attained some real ownership over the results of a war that appears fraught and highly unpredictable right now.
“So, if [a peace deal] doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance,” Trump quipped recently, to laughter. “If it does happen, I’m taking full credit.”
A joke — but one that might have some truth buried in it.
As Trump has delved further into this more aggressive and militaristic foreign policy, there’s a real risk that the party could opt for someone more aligned with that approach in the future.
It would seem no coincidence that the more hawkish Rubio gained substantial ground in the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll two weeks ago — going from 3% in 2025 to 35% this year.
Vance still won the straw poll, which is unscientific and focused on a very small but passionate element of the conservative base. But he dropped from 61% to 53% and saw his margin of victory shrink substantially.
The political appeal of being vice president is self-evident; it’s who people think of when they think about who’s next in line.
But that also means vice presidents sometimes have to be associated with things they’d rather not be — and that they often get saddled with jobs that don’t do them many favors. (See: Harris, Kamala.) They can also shoulder the blame for failures — and presidencies — they have little real control over.
Vance is getting a hefty dose of that now. And it should serve as a reminder that no campaign is over a year before it begins.
