ItLife is not a spelling bee. Ask my family or friends, and they’ll tell you, that is one of my favorite sayings. I came up with it myself several years ago, and now I use it all the time. The gold star doesn’t always go to the smartest person in the room. As a journalist, I have over the last three decades run across plenty of lawyers and politicians and even some fellow writers who, while supposedly smart, say and do really dumb things. I’m looking at you. JD Vance, also, the older I get, the more clearly I understand that’s not what you know that matters most, but rather what you feel. Having intelligence doesn’t hurt, but what really carries you far in life is empathy. Call it EQ social skills. It’s the ability to connect with fellow human beings by understanding where they’re coming from. It makes us better people, the kind of people that other people want to be around. It’s really important that we all try to live our lives wide, as wide as possible. What a tragedy it would be if we were all to reach the end of our lives, only to realize that our experience here on Earth had been too narrow. We’re supposed to do more during the short time we’re here than simply take care of our kin, our community and our kind, and not show the least bit of curiosity or compassion toward others who live outside the circle. See, that’s Donald Trump, the former president who is now, once again, the Republican nominee for president. And it’s also Trump’s Mini Me. JD Vance, the best selling author of Hillbilly Elegy, who parlayed his fame into a Senate seat from Ohio and then parlayed that seat to the point where he is now the Republican nominee for vice president. Trump is 78 and Vance is 39 the grumpy old man is literally twice the age of his running mate. Trump grew up rich and Vance grew up working class, poor, but otherwise they’re the same guy. They’re sympathetic. Goes. Both are white men who grew up with chips on their shoulders. Trump, because he was from Queens and felt looked down on by people who lived in Manhattan Vance because his childhood was severely damaged by his mother’s drug addiction, to the point where he had to be raised by his grandmother. Both men went to Ivy Lake schools, but they seemed to have emerged from that experience with a feeling of contempt for the people who attend such places, both are arrogant and unable to admit when they’re wrong. Trump is a billionaire who lives in New York and Florida, while Vance pals around with billionaires in Silicon Valley and yes, with regard to the matter at hand, both men lack empathy. In the case of Trump, this fact is very well known during his first campaign for president in 2016 and during his first and hopefully last term in the White House, Trump, time and again, demonstrated that he is totally oblivious to anyone’s experience but his own former president, Bill Clinton, would go around telling people who had hit a rough patch, I feel your pain after a national tragedy. The man from Hope, Arkansas would offer a sympathetic shoulder after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017 however, Trump offered the people whose lives were destroyed paper towels. Not quite the same thing. Is it? What I find surprising all this is Vance. Frankly, I expected more depth and more character from somebody who had a hard scrabble childhood, someone who essentially grew up without parents, someone like that should not need training in how to be more humble life. Should have taken care of that. But it turns out, Vance, who was once a venture capitalist after graduating from Yale Law School, is that rarest of commodities, a hillbilly snob. He rails against affirmative action and college or corporate initiatives that foster dei that’s diversity, equity and inclusion. He says migrants are invading the United States, and that Mexican drug cartels are getting Americans hooked on fentanyl. See, life is not a spelling bee. Intelligence can count for a lot, but empathy counts for more, and that race, the Republican ticket is running on empty