To american executives, Rob Portman is the ideal senator. Smart, reasonable and experienced, he served as the top trade representative and budget director for George W. Bush, the Republican president from 2000 to 2008, before becoming a senator for Ohio more than a decade ago. Mr Portman has just one shortcoming: he is retiring. The party’s nominee to replace him is J.D. Vance, backed by Donald Trump, the most recent Republican commander-in-chief. Mr Vance calls big technology firms “enemies of Western civilisation” and casts elite managers as part of “the regime”, with interests anathema to those of America’s heartland.
Democrats, with their leftier lean, remain
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