>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C. >> David M. Rubenstein:Our
special guest is J.D. Vance. I'm going to ask him to come up now. J.D. [ Applause ] >> David M. Rubenstein:So thank
you, very much, for coming. Let me give people who may
not know your background a little introduction. JD is Native of Middletown, Ohio. Okay. And a graduate of
the Middletown High School. He then went into the marines
for four years, served in Iraq. [ Applause ] And came back, went to Ohio State,
and finished it in two years. Then went to Yale Law School,
graduate there are a member of the Yale Law Journal, clerked
for a federal judge for a year. He is now in the investment world
and based, in part, in Washington, D.C. He is married to a former
classmate from Yale Law School, who is here, somewhere,
maybe on her way, with bringing his 2 month old son. So if you see a 2 month old
son somewhere, that's his son. So let's start. >> J.D. Vance: Sure. >> David M. Rubenstein:Surely, when
you started to write this book, in your wildest imagination you
could not have thought you were going to write a New
York Time's Best Seller on your first book, or did you? >> J.D. Vance: No, I certainly
didn't think that I would. >> David M. Rubenstein:So was it, where did the idea for
the book come from? >> J.D. Vance: Well, it
actually started in law school. And really, the genesis was that
I was very interested in some of the concepts and the ideas
that I wrote about in the book, and most specifically this question about vulnerability
in the United States. And at Yale, we had to write this,
basically this thesis by the end of our 3rd year in order to
graduate, and I really wanted to write it about, sort of, the
legal and policy implications of social mobility in the United
States, or the lack therefore. And the more that I started to talk
through the idea and the people that were advising me, the more,
and especially my primary adviser, a woman named Amy Chua,
who, herself, is a pretty successful
author, she continued. >> David M. Rubenstein:She's
the author of Tiger. >> J.D. Vance: She's the author of
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. And she encouraged
me, more and more, to bring my personal experiences
to bear, because she thought that I could write something
that was both, hopefully, intellectually interesting, but also
personally and emotionally powerful. And as I continued
to write the book, I was obviously a little
resistant to that at first, I didn't like the idea of
opening up my personal life and telling all these
personal stories. But the more that I wrote, the more
that I realized that to the degree that I had a unique contribution. It was that I understood
these things from the inside, as opposed to just as an academic. >> David M. Rubenstein:All right. So you had the idea
of writing a book. How long did it take
you to write the book? >> J.D. Vance: Well, I was
always working on it part time, so I always had another job
while I was writing the book. And I think that it probably
took me about 2 1/2 years. So I started writing it, yeah,
towards the middle of 2013, and I finished towards
the end of 2015. >> David M. Rubenstein:So
did you write in long hand, or did you do it on a computer? >> J.D. Vance: No, I
did it on my computer. My handwriting is absolutely
terrible. >> David M. Rubenstein:All right. And so, as you're writing it, did
you have any publisher lined up, or did you just say, I'll write
it and then I'll get a publisher? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah. So this is interesting. And, in some ways, it exemplifies
something that I really write about in the book, this
idea of social capital and how social connections can have
these really important benefits. So because of Amy, when I started
to really think about making this into a book project, you know, she
said, okay, let me introduce you to these people that I know
in the publishing world. And so, one of the people she
introduced me to is this woman, who eventually became my agent, and
really good friend, Tina Bennett, and as I quickly learned, when you
have an idea and you have somebody like Tina really advocating
for it, the publishing, finding a publisher
is, is relatively easy. And that's sort of what happened
with me, is that the hard part for me was getting into
the agent publishing world, and then once I was there it
wasn't so hard to find a publisher. >> David M. Rubenstein:Sometimes
first authors, first time authors say, you
know, this shouldn't be that hard to write a book, and then about
half way through, they say, how can I get out of this project? So were you in that category? Did you ever want to abandon it? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, I
definitely did want to abandon it, and if my wife is here, she can probably tell you how
miserable I was about that 50% way through the writing process. Yeah, I mean, for me, what was
so tough is that once I got about half way through
the book, you know, obviously it was too
late to give up. I couldn't just stop writing it. But, you know, writing
an additional 40, 50,000 words just seemed
so imposing. And I realized then what I didn't
realize going into the project is that I probably had about a 10 to
1 ratio of words typed to words that made it into the
final manuscript. And so I just didn't realize what
a long slog it would be until I was about halfway through it. And yeah, I definitely
thought to myself, would it be possible
to get out of this? >> David M. Rubenstein:So, your
publisher had some confidence. The initial print run was 10,000. >> J.D. Vance: Right. >> David M. Rubenstein:So
10,000 isn't 500,000, but 10,000 is good
for a first author. At what point, when the book
came out, did people say, hey, there aren't enough
copies out anymore, and we have to go print more? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah. So this happened relatively
quickly after the book came out. I want to say, in two
or three weeks, maybe. There was an interview I did with a
magazine, The American Conservative, that went viral, as they say online. A lot of people were sharing it on
Twitter and Facebook and so forth, and I went to go check my
Amazon ranking, which, you know, those of you who have
written a book will know that your Amazon ranking
is a way to check in real time how your
book is actually selling. So there was a point in my
life where I was checking it like obsessively, probably
every 7 or 8 seconds. And I go to check my Amazon
ranking and it says, you know, like book is out of stock,
will ship in about a week. And I realized then that, oh, wow, we don't have enough
books that are out there. And so that's when they
really started to turn on the proverbial presses. >> David M. Rubenstein:So
how many, now, have been printed, would you say? >> J.D. Vance: So, I don't know
how many total are in print. I know that hard copies, we've
sold just under a million, and it's a little over a million
if you count digital copies and audio copies and all that stuff. >> David M. Rubenstein:So
the title, okay. >> J.D. Vance: Yeah. [ Applause ] >> David M. Rubenstein:Now, the
title, very often authors don't come up with a title right away, and
was that your idea for the title, or where did it come from? >> J.D. Vance: It came
through a conversation with my agent, this woman, Tina. You know, I wanted the word
hillbilly to be in the book title. And the reason I wanted that
word to be in the title is because I thought it captured
both this sort of particular, kind of cultural sub-segment
that I was trying to write about. But I also thought that
it captured, obviously, this sort of interesting insider
outsider dynamic that existed in my family, where my grandma would
say, you know, we're hillbillies, we're allowed to call
each other hillbillies, but if anybody else
calls you a hillbilly, then you have to punch
them in the nose. And so it was this sort
of interesting word, that it always had a really
textured meaning as I grew up, and so I wanted that
word to be in the title. Bet elegy was really
something that it really had to take awhile before I was one, comfortable with making
it Hillbilly Elegy, and I think that was Tina's idea to
actually pair Elegy with Hillbilly, and there were a couple
of reasons for that. >> David M. Rubenstein:So now that
the book has become so well known, you are reasonable well known,
can you go to a restaurant without people asking for
autographs or selfies, or that hasn't come
to be a problem yet? >> J.D. Vance: It depends
on where I'm at. So I get noticed, you know, so back in Columbus I get
noticed a pretty fair amount. I get noticed sometimes in D.C. I
certainly get noticed a lot back in Eastern Kentucky or
in Southwestern Ohio. But, you know, like I was in
Nashville, I don't know, a week, week and 1/2 ago, and I
didn't get noticed once there. So it definitely appears. >> David M. Rubenstein:You have to make a record there,
I think, or something. >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, that's right. I think so. >> David M. Rubenstein:So,
now what has been the reaction of your family? Many of the family secrets that
many people don't really want about themselves, everybody
has family secrets. You seem to reveal
every family secret. What was the reaction
of your family to this? >> J.D. Vance: Well, I didn't
reveal every family secret, I have to keep material
for a second book, yeah. [ Laughter ] You know, it's interesting. I, in talking to my family about
revealing some of these secrets, I think that I've noticed
there's been a slight tone shift from when I started to write the
book to where it is now, right? I think the people
were much more open about spilling the family
history on the pages of a book that no one expected
anybody to read. I think now, now that we're at
the number of copies we've sold, and people are talking
about the book, there's maybe a little
more sensitivity. But yeah, you know, some
people definitely say, look, it's in the family, we shouldn't
air the family's dirty laundry. Some people, I think, appreciate
that it was an important and worthwhile story to tell. Some people come down a
little bit in the middle. >> David M. Rubenstein:So
do any of them say, well, how come I don't get
any royalties from this? They don't say that to you yet? >> J.D. Vance: Well, I
haven't gotten that yet, but maybe I will now, especially
since this is on C-SPAN. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. So let's talk about the book itself. I have read it, and I
enjoyed it a great deal. I would say, I think it's
success is due to three things, and I'd like to go through
each of those three. One is, I think, the writing
style is very crispy clear, very to the point, not a
lot of excess verbiage. Second, your personal story is
extraordinary, which is the kind of thing that, it's
almost like a novel. It's hard to believe it was true. And then third, the impact, the
relationship between what's going on in the country, the opioid
crisis, the problem of unemployment in certain parts of the country. So let's go through
each of these first. >> J.D. Vance: Sure. >> David M. Rubenstein:All right. First, the writing style. Were you a gifted writer
in college, in law school? Where did you get this, what
I would call, very crisp, very clear, writing style? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah,
I think, definitely, law school helped a
lot in that regard. Because one of the things they
teach you in law school, you know, is don't write with a lot of
excess verbiage, try to be clear and concise, direct,
but also engaging. And so, you know, thinking about how
to write as a lawyer cut out some of the excess words,
was definitely helpful. But, you know, it's
interesting that you ask if I was a talented writer always. I mean, I don't necessarily think
that I am a talented writer. But it's funny, because there
was this 8th grade biography that I had to write. And when my family, my family
still has this 8th grade biography. And it's interesting, because it's
obviously very similar to what's in Hillbilly Elegy, and they'll pass
it around and go, oh, JD, you know, he was such a great writer,
even when he was 14 years old. And then when my wife picks up that
same thing and reads it, she'll go, your family is not being honest
with you, you were not that good of a writer when you
were 14 years old. So, I don't know. I do think that law school helped. I mean, there's this story
that I tell in the book where the first big writing
assignment I had in law school, I handed it in, I was
pretty proud of it, and this law school professor handed
it back and circle this big section and said, this is a vomit of sentences masquerading
as a paragraph. So I think if you asked him
if I was a talented writer, he'd probably say no. >> David M. Rubenstein:Now
today, you know, having had a first book
that's very successful, normally publishers will
go to the author and say, you are Ernest Hemingway,
you are great, let's have another book right away, and the sooner you
get it out the better. So surely they are after
you to write another book. Are you thinking of
writing one right now? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, so definitely
thinking about writing another book. And I think I eventually will. You know, my view on this
is that it's not something that I'm trying to
undertake tomorrow. So if I write another book, it'll
be a couple of years from now, as opposed to immediately. >> David M. Rubenstein:But
eventually they'll be a paperback edition of this. >> J.D. Vance: That's right. >> David M. Rubenstein:And will you
edit it, or change it a little bit, or will you just go
at it the same way? >> J.D. Vance: I think I'll
just go at it the same way. I would like to add a chapter
just to contextualize some of the political salients that a lot of people have contributed
to the book. Because, of course, when I
started writing this in 2013, I had no idea that it would be
attached to the 2016 election in this really, you know,
frankly to me, pretty bizarre way. So I think I would like to write
at least a little bit about that, because I haven't talked
a ton about that. But otherwise, the rest of
the book will stay the same. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. Before the book, paperback
comes out, or maybe after the
paperback comes out, there is supposed to be a movie. Ron Howard is, I guess,
producing a movie, or maybe directing it as well. Who is going to play you? >> J.D. Vance: I don't know. The thing about this
is that, you know, I wanted to be somebody who's good
looking, but not so good looking that people are disappointed
when they actually meet me. [ Laughter ] >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. >> J.D. Vance: But yeah,
this is the question that I have a real trouble meeting,
because, you know, who really fits into that, you know, not too
warm, not too cold category. >> David M. Rubenstein:I'm
sure you'll find somebody. Let's go to the second part of why
I think the book is so successful, and that is your life story. For those who may not have
read the book, and I don't want to give away everything in
it, but give away a fair bit. Where were you born? >> J.D. Vance: I was born in
Middletown, Ohio, Southwestern Ohio. >> David M. Rubenstein:Right. And your biological mother and biological father
were married at the time? >> J.D. Vance: They were. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay, and did they get divorced
shortly thereafter? >> J.D. Vance: Very shortly after. I think I was maybe a year
old when they got divorced, but before memories, certainly. >> David M. Rubenstein:So your
biological mother was raising you for the early years? >> J.D. Vance: Correct. >> David M. Rubenstein:And then
you have a very close relationship with your maternal grandfather
and maternal grandmother, right? >> J.D. Vance: Sure. >> David M. Rubenstein:And what was
their name, that you called them? >> J.D. Vance: I called
them Mamaw and Papaw, and their names were Bonnie and Jim. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. And is that a hillbilly type word, or are they just unique
to your family? >> J.D. Vance: No, I think that
it's definitely pretty common in the broader culture. It's not exclusive, I've
learned, to, you know, sort of hillbilly culture. But it's definitely something
that people from that region of the country, disproportionately
they call their grandparents Mamaw and Papaw. >> David M. Rubenstein:Now
people who might live on the East Coast would say,
what's hillbilly about Ohio? That's the center of
the United States. >> J.D. Vance: Sure. >> David M. Rubenstein:But you
might describe that your roots, and your family's roots,
were really from Kentucky. Describe how you came to Ohio,
and how your family came to Ohio. >> J.D. Vance: Yeah,
so they were part of this really massive migration
from places like Eastern Kentucky, East Tennessee, West Virginia to
the industrial Midwest, right? And, I think, when they
moved, they also brought a lot of their cultural attributes
with them, and so, again, even though my family lived in
Southwestern Ohio, you know, we traveled back to
Eastern Kentucky a lot. Because I spent so much
time with my grandparents, I spent a lot of my formative years
in Eastern Kentucky and always felt that that was sort
of our real homeland. And it's interesting, that's a
pretty common attitude, you know? Folks, there are country
music songs about this. There are a lot of stories similar
to mine, where people who grew up in the industrial Midwest, who
grew up in Michigan or Indiana or Ohio, felt like their real
home was back in West Virginia, because they spent so much of
their lives back in those places, and that's where their
family was really from. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. So you're growing up and you have
a step sister or a whole sister. >> J.D. Vance: Sister, yeah. So, yeah. Different dad, same mom. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. And so both of you are being
raised by your single mother? >> J.D. Vance: Yep. >> David M. Rubenstein:And
how does she support herself? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, so
you know, mom, I remember, became a nurse sometime after, you
know, maybe I was 8 or 9 or so, so for a couple of
years she was a nurse. And, actually, as I
write about in the book, those were pretty good times
economically, you know, we weren't struggling economically
during that period of our lives. Before then, you know, I don't know. I think that, you know,
she worked odd jobs, my grandparents helped
out a little bit. And then, certainly, one of the
stories in the book is that, you know, after mom was no longer
working in nursing, you know, thinks were pretty tough
for our family economically. And I think, more importantly,
they were tough socially. There were a lot of issues. >> David M. Rubenstein:So your
mother, as you write in your book, was married, or had male
relationships with people who were living with her like
4, or 5, or 6 different times. So wasn't that kind of disconcerting
to you to see a different man in the house all the time, or? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, it was
definitely an unstable childhood from the perspective of people who
were coming in and out of our lives. And I think that, you
know, I didn't realize until I was older what
effect that was having on me. I didn't like it when I was a kid. I certainly didn't like that,
you know, I'd befriend this guy, or I'd feel like this guy
was starting to become a bit of a father figure, and then all of
the sudden he was out of our lives. I knew that was common. I knew a lot of my friends
from back home were going through the same thing, and that
none of them liked it either. I didn't quite appreciate the
effect that maybe it was having on me until, you know, until
I was older and started to look back on these things. >> David M. Rubenstein:At
some point, you know, as you write in your
book, you develop, you redevelop a relationship
with your biological father. >> J.D. Vance: Sure. >> David M. Rubenstein:You went and
actually lived with him for awhile, but that was not as
pleasant an experience as you thought it would be. Is that correct? >> J.D. Vance: Well, it was pleasant
in the sense that, you know, he really had his life together. He was living with my step mom
and they had a really, I think, a happy home life, and I think in
some ways, I was looking for that, I was searching for
that family stability. I think I was in the 8th grade
or so when this happened. But I also realized that I
had become incredibly attached to my grandma, right, because even
when I was living with mom as a kid, even when my sister and I
were living with mom as kids, we spent a ton of time
with our grandparents. And as mom sort of struggled with
problems, we more, we spent more and more time with our grandparents. So there was this real weird moment
where I was living with my dad, and I recognized that he
had sort of normal home, as people understood it, but I
just felt so desperate to get back to my grandma's house
and live with her, and that's eventually what I did. You know, I don't think I
realized until that moment that in my own mind, and in
my own heart, Mamaw had sort of become my chief caretaker. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. So you lived with your
biological father for awhile, it wasn't as happy an
experience as you had hoped. You then moved in with your maternal
grandmother and grandfather. >> J.D. Vance: Right. >> David M. Rubenstein:And then. >> J.D. Vance: Papaw, he had
passed away at that point. >> David M. Rubenstein:Let's
talk about that. He was very close to you. >> J.D. Vance: Sure. >> David M. Rubenstein:So the shock of his passing away,
how did that effect you? >> J.D. Vance: Well, it, I
mean, it effected me, I think, in all the ways that the death of a parent effects a
young kid, you know? Papaw, because of the
situation growing up, because of the revolving door
of father figures and so forth, Papaw was the closest
thing that I had to a dad during those
formative years, you know? He was the person who
took care of things. He was the person who made sure we
had all the things that kids need. And also, he was just an
emotional support for me, and my sister, and my grandmother. You know, I always had this
sense that if Papaw was around, things would be taken
care of, you know? He was always the person
who was calmest when family drama was happening. He was the person who
never lost his temper, who never flew off the handle, who,
even Mamaw, as much as I loved her, she had a temper, and Papaw didn't. And so, I think that it
effected me in a number of different and negative ways. But the way that it effected me most of all is really what
came after it, you know? I understood as a kid,
very instinctively that Papaw was the glue that
held the family together. And I realized it in a non
instinctive and very obvious way when he wasn't there, just what,
you know, just what would happen. >> David M. Rubenstein:So, you
lived with your mother for awhile, then at one point, she was violent
with you, and very difficult to deal with, and she
had a drug problem, as you refer it in the book. >> J.D. Vance: Right. >> David M. Rubenstein:And what was
it like, you recount, in the book, an experience where, in
fact, the police came and saved you from your mother. Is that fair? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah. You know, I think about this story
a lot, because, you know, I wonder, you know, I was 12 or 13 when
this happened, I always wonder if maybe it wasn't quite
as dangerous as I remember. I think, in part, that's just
because I'm a lot closer to mom now, and I think in some
ways, people, you know, they try to remember things in a
way that, you know, reflects fondly on people that they love. And I certainly love my mom, and we're doing pretty well
in our relationship now. But, you know, yeah,
I was terrified. I mean, I thought that
we were going to die, and I thought that mom was
going to try to kill us, and so, and this was in a car, the
car was traveling very fast, and she was certainly, didn't
seem especially stable. And so I got out of the car and
ran and eventually found this woman who called the police, and the
police came and arrested mom and she was, and she was
charged with domestic violence. So you know, that was obviously a
pretty traumatic moment, you know? There's no other way to cut it. >> David M. Rubenstein:And after
that happened, did you go, then, live with your grandmother,
or did you go back and live with your mother after
that incident? >> J.D. Vance: Well, for a time,
I live with my grandmother. You know, again, I was always living
with Mamaw for weeks or months at a time, even when things
were going really well. And so it wasn't that different
of a, it wasn't that much of a departure from
our normal routine. But yeah, I went and lived
with Mamaw for a little while, and then eventually went
and moved back in with mom. But, again, that was sort of the
way that things went with us. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. And when you were growing up,
you know, when I was growing up, I didn't have the experiences
that you did, but I wouldn't have the ability
to totally recall what happened when I was 12 or 10 or 9. How do you recall that,
and did you have documents? Or how did you know
these incidents so well. >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, well, I
think this is where, you know, being able to rely on your
family really helps, right? So, you know, a lot of this stuff
I tried to cross reference as much as possible with my aunt, or
my sister, my mom, my dad. You know, what happened here? This is sort of, you know, here's
the draft, here's the manuscript of this particular story. You know, what am I leaving out? What am I missing? What haven't I quite
remember correctly? And I do think, you know, going
back to how the family reacted to the book, that's one of the
reasons they reacted pretty well, because I tried to make them
part of the writing process. This wasn't just sort of
from my memory onto the page. I really tried to make it a
family memoir in that sense. But as I said in the introduction,
I'm sure that things aren't perfect, but they're certainly
how I remember them. And I think that they're pretty
well documented, at least as much as you can with what
is primarily a memoir. >> David M. Rubenstein:Now as you go
through, in the book, you point out, obviously, your grandmother
died as well. That must have been
fairly traumatic. Were you living with her
at the time that she died? >> J.D. Vance: No, I was in
the Marine Corp at the time. This was actually just a few months
before I left for Iraq in 2005. And, you know. >> David M. Rubenstein:You were
living with her when you, when you, you were getting ready,
when you graduated from high school you
were living with her. >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, that's right. No, no, no, no. So, well, I lived with her
for almost all of high school. And left for the marines,
you know, from her house. >> David M. Rubenstein:So you
were filling out applications, you write in your book, for college. And then either you thought you
couldn't afford the college, or you weren't sure
you were ready for it. What was the reason you didn't go
to college right out of high school? >> J.D. Vance: Well, it was both. Definitely I didn't
feel ready for it. I thought that, you know, I had at
least enough maturity at the time to recognize that this maybe
was my one real opportunity to have anything in the way of
a good job, or a good career, that if I screwed this college thing
up, that would be pretty much it, that would be me blowing
my one chance. And so, you know, because of that I
didn't want to take it for granted, and I thought that I was in
this position just as a person, where if I went to college,
I felt like I would have, I would have taken advantage of it. You know the cost part of it was
definitely a significant issue as well. You know, it wasn't just the cost. I mean, obviously I knew that I'd
have to take out all of these loans, and we sort of knew that there
were these Pell Grants and things like that that I'd be
able to take advantage of. But even with that, I knew that it would be a pretty
significant amount of debt to incur. But it was more actually
the logistical side of it that made college seem so imposing. You know, if you think
about like filling out the financial aid paperwork. What is your dad's annual income? What is your dad's address? I mean, at that time,
I hadn't spoken to my legal father in 6 or 7 years. Going and finding that information
would have required a certain amount of detective work. You know, there were sort
of these pages to sign off on these massive loans, and it was
my grandma, who hadn't graduated from high school, and me, and
it just seemed really imposing, and in some ways, a
little terrifying to go through this entire administrative
process that no one really, in my family, had gone through, and I didn't feel comfortable
doing it myself. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. So you just said, I'll
walk down the street and go to the Marine recruiter,
is that what happened? Or? >> J.D. Vance: Well,
yeah, that's, I think, a similar version of what happened. I mean, at that point, so there
are six kids in my generation of grandchildren, my two
older cousins, my sister and my two younger cousins, and of
the six of us, three of us enlisted in the Marine Corp, both
of the older cousins have. So I was encouraged pretty
strongly by my cousin Rachel, who was in the Marine Corp. She
said, you know, if you're worried about how you're going
to pay for school, and more importantly you're
worried about whether you're ready for college, you should just
go join the Marine Corp. Like, that'll be great for you. You'll, you know, you'll get out
of town, you'll see some stuff, you'll gain some financial
independence, and you should really go
and think about doing that. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. So you signed up for the Marine
Corp. Did your family tell you that was a good idea? Your mother? Your? >> J.D. Vance: Well, I, you know, it's definitely a patriotic
community and a patriotic family, so people were proud of me. But they were not especially happy
that I had chosen, yeah, remember, this is, I guess I
signed up in 2003. We had just invaded Iraq. We'd been involved in
Afghanistan for awhile. There was definitely some real
apprehension, justifiably so, about what joining
the Marine Corp meant, what I was getting myself into. And Mamaw, especially,
reacted very negatively. You know, I think, in some ways,
she framed my decision to go into the Marine Corp
instead of college, you know, almost as a betrayal. That you're going off and leaving
me, leaving me to take care of myself, you could get hurt. And I think that was,
obviously, very hard, but ultimately she understood
why I needed to do it. >> David M. Rubenstein:All right. So you went to basic training. And what was that like? Did you, I mean, fear you couldn't
get through basic training? >> J.D. Vance: I was never afraid
that I couldn't get through. I mean, maybe when I was in high
school, I was a little bit afraid of the physical demands,
and so forth. You know, but a drill instructor
told me, actually, you know, if you think those drill
instructors are going to be mean, they'll be nothing like
that grandma of yours. >> David M. Rubenstein:Right. >> J.D. Vance: And I really thought, that so long as I could
physically cut it, the psychological part would be
fine and I'd be able to make it. and that was true, you know. Marine Corp boot camp is definitely
challenging, but it's also, in a weird way, it's kind of fun. Maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome. But I know a lot of Marines who actually enjoyed their
Marine Corp boot camp experience, and I was no different
in that regard. >> David M. Rubenstein:Your
grandmother, by the way, recounting your book, she
has a colorful language. Did that rub off on you? Or how did you avoid, or
she never was embarrassed to use those words around you? Or you didn't say anything about it? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, well, I think
my son is too young to show evidence of how foul my language is. You know, I definitely try to
cut back on the language relative to my grandma, just
because, I mean, she really, she loved a dramatic
and well placed f-word. [ Laughter ] And, I, you know, you
go from Mamaw's house to the U.S. Marine Corp,
you know, the phrase curse like a sailor doesn't come from
nowhere, and the Marine Corp's part of the Department of the Navy. And I think that I definitely have
had to scale back my language just to like operate in civil society. [ Laughter ] But it's like ingrained in me, and
I definitely don't always succeed. >> David M. Rubenstein:All right. So you're in the Marine Corp,
you get through basic training, and then you go over to Iraq. >> J.D. Vance: Yeah. >> David M. Rubenstein:And were
you afraid you wouldn't come back in one piece, or you weren't
sure you would survive, or? >> J.D. Vance: Well,
I think anybody, when they're about
to deploy to Iraq, is worried about whether
they'll come back in one piece. The thing to remember
is that I had an MOS, meaning a military occupation
specialty, where, you know, we had lost some people in my MOS to
combat deaths and combat injuries, but it wasn't quite, you know,
I wasn't thinking quite as much about the danger as maybe I would
have been if I was, you know, working in the infantry,
for example. So I was worried about it, but
I also tried to talk myself up and recognize that, you
know, it'll be dangerous, it'll certainly be more dangerous
than driving down the street, but I'll probably end up, you know, most Marines end up
coming back okay. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. So after four years, you
leave the military, right? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah. >> David M. Rubenstein:And then you
decide you want to go to college. >> J.D. Vance: Sure. >> David M. Rubenstein:You felt
you were then ready for it. >> J.D. Vance: Yep. >> David M. Rubenstein:But you
were then 40 years older than many of your college contemporaries,
right? >> J.D. Vance: Sure. >> David M. Rubenstein:So why do
you decide to go to Ohio State, not that it's not a
great place to go, but did you consider
any other place? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, some
OSU fans out there, go Bucks. [ Applause ] Well, you know, I think
it's possible to sort of make these decisions seem
more rational than they were. I mean, honestly, the reason I
wanted to go to Ohio State is because I grew up rooting and
loving Ohio State and a lot of my friends had gone there. I was not nearly as, maybe, thoughtful about my college
decision as I should've been. I had a great experience there, and
I'm really glad that I went there. But it was basically luck that
I found myself at Ohio State. I wasn't sort of thinking as smartly
about it as I should've been. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. So normally people go to
college for four years. >> J.D. Vance: Yeah. >> David M. Rubenstein:And
you seem to get through Ohio State in two years. >> J.D. Vance: Sure. >> David M. Rubenstein:How do you
get through Ohio State in two years? >> J.D. Vance: Well, you
take a lot of classes, you go during the summer,
and you transfer credits that you gained during the
Marine Corp over to Ohio State. Those three things were able
to, or were enough to enable me to cut a couple of years off. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. So how did you support yourself. Where would the money
come from for Ohio State? Did you have grants then, or the Marine Corp salary
was enough to supplement you? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah,
a couple of things. So I was no longer in the Marine
Corp, so I wasn't getting a salary from the government anymore. >> David M. Rubenstein:But
the money you had saved. >> J.D. Vance: Sure. So, you know, a little bit of
savings, a little bit of debt that I incurred, you know,
I borrowed some, you know, some of the subsidized loans,
had some Pell Grants at OSU, had the GI Bill, which I was
trying to save for law school, but I used some of the
GI Bill during college. And then I, you know, I
worked jobs during college. So it sort of, those
multiple different sources of income were enough
to get me through. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. So you graduate in two years. >> J.D. Vance: Yep. >> David M. Rubenstein:And then you
decide you want to go to law school. >> J.D. Vance: Yeah. >> David M. Rubenstein:But as
you point out in your book, there aren't as many
people going to let's say, Yale or Harvard Law
Schools, from Ohio State. >> J.D. Vance: Sure. >> David M. Rubenstein:Though
there obviously are some. But how did you happen to
decide to go to Yale Law School, which is a great law school, as
opposed to Ohio State Law School, or some other school in the Midwest? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah. So this is another thing where I wasn't thinking
super strategically about it. You know, I applied to a few
law schools, I got into them, and sort of was thinking
about just, you know, going to one of those schools,
and my friend, you know, one of my best friends, he was the
best man in my wedding, actually, who, himself was a lawyer, you know,
said, look, you've got good grades and you think you can get into
a good place, this is 2009, this is right after the
Great Recession, he's like, I've got friends from law school
who are struggling to find work, so you should try to get
into the best school you can, because that'll be your
best insurance policy against unemployment. And so then I actually ended up
taking off a little bit of time, and then reapplying and
that's when I applied to Yale. >> David M. Rubenstein:But you were
an average high school student, but in college you did much better. How did you change from a mediocre,
average student, to a great student? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, I think average
is probably putting it charitably in high school. You know, a couple of things, right? I mean, so one, I was
just a more mature person. This goes back to me being ready
for college in a psychological way. I sort of appreciated that it
was this opportunity as opposed to just a responsibility that
somebody had hoisted upon me. And so I just tried harder. I think, you know, paying for it and
sort of seeing that debt bill go up and up maybe gave me some
sense to the fact that it was, I was lucky to be able to go there. You know, but I also thought a lot about my grandma when
I was in college. You know, this is a woman
who left school, I think, when she was 14 years old
to come north to Ohio. She had not had many
educational opportunities, she was super, super smart. And I just thought
to myself, you know, if Mamaw can sacrifice all those
things to get me to a place like this, I should
actually take advantage of it and I should actually try hard. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. So you go to Yale Law School. Now Yale Law School is about
the hardest law school to get into in the United States,
very small law school, many people go there from
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, similar kind of colleges. Did you feel a little out of place
when you got to Yale Law School? There weren't that many
people in your class, as I recall, from Ohio State. >> J.D. Vance: Yeah,
I think in my year, I was the only Ohio
State grad at Yale. You know, it was weird
to me, because I realized that there were high schools,
you know, preparatory schools, where there were more students from
that high school at Yale Law School than there were of my University, which just struck me
as a little bit weird. But yeah, it was definitely
culture shock. It was more of a culture
shock, frankly, than any place I had ever been. It was more of a culture
shock than the Marine Corp, more than Ohio State, you know, it was sort of astonishing just
how different the expectations and the backgrounds were
from some of my classmates, relative to where I came from. >> David M. Rubenstein:Now, another
person who went to Yale Law School, Bill Clinton, came from Arkansas,
and he used to, apparently, take a lot of pride and
say, I'm from Arkansas, it's a great state, and so forth. Did you say, I'm a hillbilly from
Kentucky, and Ohio, and, you know, I'm really different,
but I'm really as good as you guys, or how did you fit in? >> J.D. Vance: I don't know that
I ever introduced myself and said, I'm a hillbilly from
Ohio, how are you? [ Laughter ] But I think that definitely came through in the way that
I conducted myself. I mean, I was definitely a
pretty strong Ohio partisan, even in undergrad. I think everyone, or
even in law school, I think everyone knew
where I was from. But, yeah, I don't know if
I used that precise phrase. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. So how did you do at, how did
you do at Yale Law School? Were you academically at
the top, or in the middle, or at the bottom, or where were you? >> J.D. Vance: I did okay. I mean, I don't think I was
at the top, by any means, I think my wife was at the top, which is why she's clerking
for the Chief Justice. I definitely didn't do as
well as her, I know that. The weird thing about Yale, for
those of you who sort of know some of these law schools, is they
don't give traditional grades, so it's actually really
hard to sort of know where you rank relative
to your peers. My sense is that I was doing fine. I wasn't at the bottom of the pack, but I certainly wasn't
at the top, either. And I was sort of, I was
comfortable with that. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. So you wrote your way onto the Yale
Law Journal, which is usually one of the most prestigious things
that you can do at Yale Law School. And then did you decide that
you wanted to practice law or be a clerk, or what did you
decide that you wanted to do? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, so my wife and
I had this opportunity, actually, to go to the Eastern
District of Kentucky. >> David M. Rubenstein:You
met your wife in, was she in the same class as you. >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, was
in the same law school. >> David M. Rubenstein:Is
she here now? Or where is she? >> J.D. Vance: She probably. >> David M. Rubenstein:Is
the wife here, somewhere? I don't see her here. But I thought she was coming. Where is she? >> J.D. Vance: There she is. >> David M. Rubenstein:There she
is, okay, there she is, okay. [ Applause ] Okay. Okay. >> J.D. Vance: Sorry. >> David M. Rubenstein:All right. So you met her, and you
were in the same class? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah. So we were in the same class. So we had an opportunity to clerk
on the Eastern District of Kentucky, which both of our judges, we
worked for separate judges, but they were both in Covington, which is just over the
river from Cincinnati. And so it's sort of this perfect
opportunity to go and, you know, clerk for a federal judge, but be
close to home, and work on things that were both really
interesting to us. >> David M. Rubenstein:You had
spent most of your life trying to escape Kentucky and then
you went back to Kentucky. >> J.D. Vance: Well, I
don't know that I was trying to escape Kentucky, so much as the
chaotic home that I grew up in. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. >> J.D. Vance: I've always sort of
loved, you know, loved the places that I came from, and
always wanted to go back. But yeah, you know, it
definitely was a really exciting and a really good year. We both worked for like
really good people. You know, sometimes people get stuck
with bad judges, so we both worked for great people and
had a great year. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. So, as I said at the beginning, there were three reasons why I
think the book is very successful, at least in my view. One is, it's very well written,
very precise and very, a good read. Secondly, the life story
is almost like a novel, so it's very interesting. But the third is, I think, one of
the reasons the book has become so popular, because as
you point out yourself, the world has changed a fair bit since you conceived
of writing the book. >> J.D. Vance: Sure. >> David M. Rubenstein:And now,
what you wrote about is seen as one of the problems of our country,
which we have a lot of drug abuse, opioid abuse, unemployment,
particularly, I'd say, in the Midwest, and a lot of the
kind of people that you come from, the roots where you come
from have these problems. So let's talk about that for awhile. >> J.D. Vance: Sure. >> David M. Rubenstein:Let's talk about the opioid problem,
for example. And you growing up, you
point out in your book that drug abuse was a
problem in your area and you think it's gotten worse. And why do you think it's so bad? >> J.D. Vance: Well, yeah, it's definitely something
I saw growing up. And I remember when, you know,
addiction hit our family and I found out that mom was addicted to, you
know, prescription pain pills, as we called them back then. I just didn't understand it, right, I didn't understand why anybody
would be addicted to pain pills. It wasn't especially common. This was back in the mid 90's, so the problem had not gone
main stream as it has now. Now, of course, in 2017,
we sit here and we talk about the opioid epidemic, which is
now, really, a nationwide crisis. And so I did feel in some ways
like I got an early insight into what would later
become a significant crisis. Why has it gotten worse? There are a ton of
different reasons and a ton of different explanations, right? So one is, I think,
you know, to be honest, a lot of these drugs were
marketed as non addictive and they were addictive, and
so people got hooked on them, and it caused a lot of problems. I think that you have
a really significant over prescription problem in some
of these areas where, you know, I was just in Southeastern Ohio a
few months ago talking to some folks who are dealing with this. And they tell me that, you know,
when high school kids used to hang out and get into their
parent's liquor cabinet, or get into their parent's
beer, now they will get into grandma's medicine
cabinet and pass around drugs. Well, that's a different
kind of problem. And I also think that, you
know, it is, in some ways, a consequence of some really
negative social problems that exist in these communities. You know, if you have domestic
violence, and you have a lot of family instability, if you
have a lot of unemployment, then people do eventually get,
they find some way to deal with it. Maybe 50 years ago, they
dealt with it with alcohol, and now they're dealing with it through a substance that's
just much more addictive. >> David M. Rubenstein:How did, but
you largely seem to have avoided, you know, the opioid problem,
and you write, as I recall, maybe some use of marijuana
or something, but not really anything
that was addictive. So how did you avoid that in the
environment in which you grew up? >> J.D. Vance: Well, Mamaw was
very cognoscente of the problems of addiction and was really,
really strict about this stuff. I mean, if she found out that
we were smoking a cigarette, or that we had anything to drink,
Mamaw would fly off the handle. And I think, I think she appreciated
just how bad addiction could be, and that it clearly had this
role in our family, you know? This is the thing that really ruined
her life for the first 30 years of her marriage, was alcoholism, and then it was ruining the
life of one of her kids. And so, I was very much on guard,
I mean, almost obsessively so. I'm one of these people who
doesn't like to take ibuprofen for a headache because I'm like
really uncomfortable with the idea of putting foreign
substances in my body, because I've seen addiction
trap a lot of people. You know, I got really sick
when I was at Ohio State. I had mono. And they gave me this synthetic
opioid called delaudid, because I had to, you
know, take some medicine. Anyway, I had this delaudid, I
was in the hospital at Ohio State, and I remember calling, basically,
everyone in my family saying, I know why Mamaw didn't like us to take this stuff,
because it is fantastic. [ Laughter ] So I just think being on guard
about that stuff is good. >> David M. Rubenstein:What
about alcohol? You avoided alcohol? >> J.D. Vance: No, I
haven't avoided alcohol. [ Laughter ] I certainly have never felt that I've been addicted
to alcohol, you know? I'm sort of, when they ask you at
the doctor, I'm one of these once or twice a week type people. But no, I, I've never
felt especially addicted to anything except for chocolate
chip cookies and ice cream. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. Now let's talk about unemployment. As you point out in the book,
many people left Kentucky, and places like that, to go north. >> J.D. Vance: Sure. >> David M. Rubenstein:To
look for jobs. But those jobs have
now been hollowed out. So you see a lot of
unemployment in the kind of background that you have. >> J.D. Vance: Right. >> David M. Rubenstein:Can you
describe whether it's getting better or worse, and what's being done
about it, or can be done about it. >> J.D. Vance: Is it getting, it's certainly getting better
the past couple of years, just because the economy
has picked up a little bit. But I don't think that it's improved
significantly over, you know, where it was 30 or 40 years ago. What I mean is that the number
of people that the coal industry or the steel mill industry employed
in, let's say, the 1950's and 60's, that hasn't returned in
the past couple of years. It's not, you know,
maybe as bad as it was. But I do think that you're
seeing a really, long term, significant economic shift
in some of these areas. And, you know, it's something, honestly I think policy
makers were a little blind to. I think that everybody just
thought that the economy adjust, that folks would get different jobs,
that they would skill up and move into different professions. But what's actually happened
is that you've seen a lot of communities get really
significantly decimated, and that's obviously one of
the undercurrents of the book. You know, what is there
to do about it? There are, I think, a
lot of different things that we could do about it. You know, the first is that, I think
we have a pretty significant problem with the fact that you're
effectively given a choice, when you graduate from high
school, between going and working in a fast food job, and going
and getting a college education. And I think that we should
provide more pathways than that. I think it's not surprising when
those are the only two pathways that you see people going
in those two directions. [ Applause ] But I also think, but
I also think we have to think a little bit
more constructively about regional economic
development, you know? The way that this has gone for
the past 10 or 20 years is that, I'm a local municipality, I offer
somebody a tax credit to set up a restaurant in my
home town, that's great. New restaurants are fantastic,
but that's not the sort of long term economic
redevelopment that has to happen in some of these areas. And I think that's it's
something that, basically, all levels of policy makers have to be thinking differently
than they are right now. >> David M. Rubenstein:Now if
somebody writes a book that's as successful as yours, and about
the subjects that you deal with, at some point, somebody from the
Democratic National Committee or the Republican National Committee
will say, you are a great candidate to be a member of congress,
governor, senator, and maybe something even higher. So have you ever thought about, and have you been importune
to run for something? >> J.D. Vance: I think
we're out of time, right? Thank you. I appreciate that. [ Laughter ] >> David M. Rubenstein:All right. So, it's, so you would say? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah. >> David M. Rubenstein:You wouldn't
preclude anything from happening. >> J.D. Vance: No, certainly not. You know, yeah, certainly when
that progression is exactly right. When you have a book
that's successful, people from various political
parties come to you and ask you if you'd be interested
in these things, and. >> David M. Rubenstein:Have
you talked to any people who have these jobs who
actually like these jobs, though? >> J.D. Vance: I actually
don't think that I have. >> David M. Rubenstein:Right. >> J.D. Vance: You know, I've talked
to a couple of members of congress, you know, not about me running,
but just certainly about, you know, in this environment do you
actually enjoy what you do? And they say, yeah, you know, I
really like working on policy, the problem is we don't
do any of that. So, no. >> David M. Rubenstein:So, but, or
leaving aside whether you would run for something, because the
platform you now have is so great, you can be a spokesman about
alcoholism, unemployment, opioid addiction, and are you
going to kind of make a part of your career talking about
these issues, or do you want to not be seen as a
spokesman for these issues? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah. I don't know that I want to be seen
as a spokesman for these issues, but I certainly think
that it's, you know, now that I have this
platform it's, you know, I might as well do something with
it, productive, other than just, you know, go and talk
about the book. There are other issues that
are worth talking about. So, you know, I've tried to be a
constructive participant in some of these policy debates, you know, during the health care reform
debate of a few months ago. I went on to Capitol Hill and
I tried to talk to folks about, this is how this might
effect the opioid crisis, this is how this might effect
some of the people from back home. So I try to be a constructive
participant as much as possible. But, you know, we live in an
especially non constructive time. So I think that you have to be
careful, and you have to be smart, and you have to be, you know, you
have to recognize that sometimes, even when you try to
be careful and smart, you're not actually
being careful and smart. >> David M. Rubenstein:So when you
go to talk to members of Congress, or get involved with
Congressional staff people, did they just want a picture
with you, or your autograph on their book, or did they
actually listen to what you say? >> J.D. Vance: Well, it depends. It depends on the member
and it depends on some of the staff members. But no, I found, generally
speaking, you know, that I've become maybe more cynical
about our political process at large since the book came out, just,
you know, from talking to folks and spending some time
in these areas. I do feel more optimistic about
individual members and their staff. I think that, by and large, people
actually want to make a difference and care about the policy, and care about what effect it's
going to have. It's just we happen to
live in a political period and a political time where it's
really hard to translate interest in policy to constructive
accomplishments. >> David M. Rubenstein:But
people who might be called, not pejoratively, but people
might call themselves hillbillies, or from hillbilly culture,
are the proud of your book for having exposed some of
the challenges they have? Or are they upset for having exposed
some of the challenges they have? >> J.D. Vance: I think
opinions differ. Right? I mean, you, there are
people out there who think that I'm basically a
traitor and who hate my guts. There are people out there who
think that I have shed a light on really important issues,
and they appreciate it. I think that the thing that I hear
most from people back home, when I, you know, when I go and talk about
the book, or just when I hear people when run into me on the
street, is that they appreciate that the book has talked about these
problems in a way that they feel like wasn't talked about before, that nobody really wrote
the story from the inside. Nobody really talked about, you
know, what is it like to grow up in a household with a lot of
instability, a lot of addiction? What's it like to grow up in
a household where, you know, you're really worried about
whether you can pay for college, or even pay for more
fundamental things. You know, that is the part that's
been the most gratifying to me. But I also think that, you know,
it's a region that's really large and really diverse, and so you
have opinions that are probably as diverse as any large population. >> David M. Rubenstein:So what
is the most frequent question you get asked? You're in the speaking circuit a
little bit, and you're on TV at CNN, you're a contributor at CNN. >> J.D. Vance: Sure. >> David M. Rubenstein:What is the
question you get most frequently asked by audiences about your
book, or about your background? >> J.D. Vance: The question I get
most frequently asked, I mean, it's probably how my
family reacted to the book. I think that's definitely something
that people are curious about. I get asked a lot how
my mom's doing. >> David M. Rubenstein:Well,
how is she doing? >> J.D. Vance: And the answer to
that, she's doing really well, yeah, she's doing really well. >> David M. Rubenstein:So
she's living, she's not married now,
she's living in Ohio? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, she's, yeah,
yeah, she's living back home. She's doing well. She's been clean for
a very long time. And I think, in some ways, you
know, while mom may not be ready to play this role, and so I'm
not going to hoist it upon her, I think she's a really good
example of what can happen when, even after five or six times you get
knocked off the horse of addiction and back into relapse, that
it's still possible to sort of climb back out, to
find the right supports, and to make another go at it. And that, you know, that's
something I really admire about mom. She's incredibly tenacious. [ Applause ] >> David M. Rubenstein:Does she
now have like the business card that says, J.D. Vance's mother. She doesn't have that
on her business card? >> J.D. Vance: She does not. >> David M. Rubenstein:And what
about your biological father, is he, do you have contact with him? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah. Yeah, I actually just
got a text message from him right when I went up here. Yeah, so dad and I are still
close and still talk quite a bit. You know, he's doing pretty well. He, you know, he's a great guy. And I think that he, you
know, he and I most often talk about his grandson and that's
what he's most interested in, and I think that's true
of a lot of grandparents. >> David M. Rubenstein:So
you talked about in the book, you grew up largely
with your sister. >> J.D. Vance: Yeah. >> David M. Rubenstein:Now
what is she doing now? >> J.D. Vance: So my sister has
three kids back home in Middletown, has been married for 20 years
or so, and is doing well. You know, I think that what
Lindsey and I have wanted to really accomplish, like what we
thought of as success in our lives, was being able to give our kids
the stability and the comfort and the sense of security
that we didn't have as kids. She has successfully done
that for almost 20 years. Her oldest kid is 18. I have done that for 3 months. [ Laughter ] So I'm hopeful I get there, too. >> David M. Rubenstein:And today,
do you find that your friends from high school, they laugh at your
jokes more than they did before, or they treat you differently,
or how do the people grew up with treat you now
that you're so famous? And wealthy? Do people ask you for money? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, sometimes
people ask me for money. But that's, you know,
not a common occurrence. But yeah, you know, there
are definitely some people who laugh louder at my jokes, but
my real friends do not laugh louder. I mean, it's one of
the really good things about having a successful book,
or what a successful book can do, is you definitely realize the people
who are loyal to you no matter what and don't let you get too big for
your britches, as we say back home. Those are the people
that I really latch onto. >> David M. Rubenstein:Okay. So leaving aside your
potential political career, right now you're not practicing law,
but you are in, what I would call, the highest calling of mankind,
private equity and investing. So, why did you choose to go into what I'll call the
venture capital space? You're in an area, a narrow niche
of private equity, venture capital. Why did you choose
to go into that area? And you're doing it from
a firm that's based here, and you're also living in
Ohio, though, is that right? >> J.D. Vance: Sure. Well, it, so that is right. And what I find so interesting
about what I'm doing right now is that if it's done well, it can actually help
create amazing new products and amazing new companies
and amazing new jobs that didn't exist before, right? And so one of the things that
I realized in law school, and I think I came into this with
sot of this veil behind my eyes that was lifted, is that you know,
what, the people who, I think, really frankly call the
shots in our economic system, are those who are figuring out,
you know, where capital goes. And I think that when I realized
that, I thought to myself, I'd like to be a guy who is trying
to figure out how to get capital to go into good places where
it's going to do a lot of good, and where it's going to create a lot
of value, not just for investors, but for people on the
receiving end, too. >> David M. Rubenstein:Now, some
people who write first books. [ Applause ] Some people write a book, you know,
Margaret Mitchell, Ralph Ellison, their first book is so successful that they have a hard time
writing a second book. They get writer's block because
they think nothing can be as good as the first book. You don't worry about that problem? >> J.D. Vance: Well, I don't know. I think that, I still don't know
that my first book was that good, so I don't know that any
follow up will be measured well or poorly compared to it. It certainly was very successful. And I think that I'd be an idiot if I expected any other
to be as successful. But I'll let other people
decide whether it's good or not. >> David M. Rubenstein:So what
you want to do with your life, and what you'd like, you'd be a,
let's say, a role model for people who came out of the kind of
background that you came out of. And now, rightly or wrongly,
whether you want it or not, you're a bit of a role
model for people who come out of your kind of background. As a role model, do you
feel more responsibility to live a life a certain way? Do you feel you should give back
to your community a certain way? What, how has your life changed
as a result of this book? >> J.D. Vance: Well, yeah, I
mean I definitely feel a certain responsibility, when I go on TV, not to make my entire community
seem like an idiot, right? Because I think one of the things
that I have not appreciated, but I just have accepted as reality,
is that a lot of people see me as sort of a spokesperson
for the white working class. A lot of times I'm asked to
go on TV and say, you know, what does the Trump voter
feel about this or that issue? I think that's unfair. I don't think that any person could
possibly speak for that many people, or for the Trump voter at large,
but what I try to do is recognize that some people see me
as that representative, so I try not to sound like a
total buffoon when I go on TV. That's one way that, I think,
things have really changed. But, I mean, you know,
it's crazy, right? I mean, a year and a half ago, I was
not sitting here in an auditorium in front of hundreds of people. So it's, it's kind of impossible to
describe how my life has changed. It's changed in the way that, you
know, any person's life changes when they go from sitting at
home eating pints of ice cream and watching Netflix, to sitting
here in front of hundreds of people. >> David M. Rubenstein:Like
the people, the President of the United
States called you and said, I read your book, and you
really exemplify that kind of voter I appeal to, or you haven't
heard that kind of reaction yet? >> J.D. Vance: I've never heard
that from President Trump. I have heard, you know,
people who work at the White House who've said
something similar to that. So, but no, I've never gotten the
phone call from President Trump. Still waiting. >> David M. Rubenstein:So, today, you would say you're a very happy
person, you've got a child, a wife, and your mother and
father are doing well, so you're a very happy person
today, and the experience of the book has made
your life even better? >> J.D. Vance: Yeah, yeah. I mean, things are
really going great. The book has changed my
life in a very weird way, but in definitely a positive way. >> David M. Rubenstein:Well,
I read the book. As I said, I thought
it was a great book. I highly recommend it to
those who haven't read it yet. And those who've read
it once, read it again. I do think it's very
instructive, well written. And I want to thank you for a
very interesting conversation. >> J.D. Vance: Thanks, David. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov.
