What JD Vance Might Learn From Meloni About Succeeding a Titan

The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prevents a president from being elected to a third term. With President Trump winning re-election in 2024, he will not be eligible to run again. This reality has both Democrats and Republicans asking themselves if ‘Trumpism’ will survive once he exits the political stage. The second question often debated is who will inherit Trump’s base and whether his successor can sustain Trump’s hold on the Republican Party and the MAGA movement. 

The person most likely to inherit Trump’s base is Vice President JD Vance. In many ways, Vance is more aligned with the MAGA movement than President Trump, most notably on foreign policy and the role of religion in our nation’s public affairs. After the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on September 10th, it was Vance who took the leading role in eulogizing Kirk, both defining and defending his Christian populist narrative before the country. Over the past year, Vance has worked hard to develop close working relationships with a network of MAGA-associated advocacy organizations, think tanks, influencers, podcasters, and donors.  

Although Vance shares Trump’s policy prescriptions on illegal immigration, trade, tariffs, and other domestic issues, he seems far more skeptical of long-standing U.S. global security relationships. He often criticizes NATO and has expressed little public support for defending Taiwan from a potential Chinese invasion. Vance also seems reluctant to increase U.S. involvement in both Ukraine and the war in Gaza. He has shown little interest, unlike President Trump, in using U.S. power and diplomacy to negotiate peace deals around the world. 

A converted conservative Catholic, Vance is also more likely than Trump to assertively expand religious liberty protections and be more receptive to pro-life advocates within the Republican Party, which Trump has kept at a distance since his first term in office. With these nuanced positions, which slightly differ from those of President Trump, can Vance inherit the MAGA movement while modifying its policy interests and direction, or is ‘Trumpism’ impossible to maintain and grow without the super-sized personality of President Trump?

To answer that question, Vance should examine how another gifted populist politician in a Western democracy was able to not only inherit a political movement from a larger-than-life politician but also transform that movement by making it her own. At thirty-one, Giorgia Meloni became the youngest minister in the Italian government of the late Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a billionaire businessman who created and led the conservative Forza Italia party. 

Berlusconi’s personality and politics dominated Italian life between 1994 and 2011, during which time he served three stints as prime minister. His massive ego and unconventional methods of governing made him a hero to the Italian Right and a villain to the Left, dividing the country more than any other modern Italian politician. He was Trump before Trump. After the fall of Berlusconi, Meloni knew that she couldn’t duplicate his cult of personality, and she quickly recognized that the conservative movement had to both change and be rebranded for her to succeed.

After leaving her mentor Berlusconi and the conservative People of Freedom Party in 2012, Meloni co-founded the populist Fratelli d’Italia Party. Ten years later, in 2022, Meloni was elected prime minister. She quickly adopted a ‘common-sense’ governing style to forever separate herself from the ego-fueled, larger-than-life personality of Berlusconi, who died in 2023. She did this while embracing a populist policy agenda, which included an end to open immigration, less intervention in foreign conflicts, free speech legal protections, and rejecting a more intrusive EU bureaucracy. She also began to publicly defend traditional marriage, the role of the Catholic Church in public affairs, and Italy’s national sovereignty. Berlusconi and other right-wing parties often ignored these cultural issues, preferring to focus on their free-market economic agenda. 

Can Vice President Vance learn from the success enjoyed by Prime Minister Meloni after she skillfully transformed the Italian right from the transactional politics of Silvio Berlusconi to a populist movement defined by policy rather than personality? The biggest problem confronting Meloni was that she could never dominate the news cycle or manipulate the political conversation through force of personality like Berlusconi. Instead, she wed her straightforward, no-nonsense governing style to a populist policy agenda that embraced many of Berlusconi’s economic and anti-immigration positions while adding a broader religious and cultural narrative to her politics to appeal directly to Italian national pride. The strategy has worked brilliantly, uniting the Right and making Meloni one of the most popular and influential prime ministers in modern Italian history. 

For Vance to replicate the success of Meloni, he will need to do the same. President Trump’s formidable personality, unconventional politics, and unpredictable transactional style of governing closely mimic Berlusconi’s long tenure in Italian politics. Trump, like Berlusconi, will be a hard act to follow. However, Vance and Meloni have a great deal in common. They both share a direct and straightforward governing style. They also embrace a similar populist policy agenda that focuses on stopping illegal immigration, a healthy mistrust of ‘free trade’ and global institutions, a reluctance to get involved in foreign wars, a skepticism of EU security and economic policies, and a foundational belief that preserving Western civilization and national sovereignty are important goals for both countries. 

Will Vance enjoy the same post-Trump success as Meloni? Trump and the MAGA movement seem willing to give him that opportunity. Recent polls suggest that he is the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028 and the preferred successor to President Trump. His success or failure will be determined by his own political skills, but the electoral blueprint for successfully following a larger-than-life leader has already been laid out for Vice President JD Vance by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.