Vance … has seen his approval rating drop since Trump announced him as his running mate on July 15.

The Republican’s net favorability was -6 in a YouGov survey conducted between July 15 and July 19. It dropped to -9 in another survey conducted between July 22 and July 25.

A poll conducted by Marist Poll for NPR and PBS between August 1 and August 4 also had Vance’s net favorability at -9 (34 percent favorable, 43 percent unfavorable). This was 5 points lower than in the same poll in July.

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There are three reasons for these results, UD would argue, and we will now list them, from superficial all the way to profound.

1.) Nixon Phiz. Walz is clean-shaven, with an open, genial, sociable, curious about the world, sort of expression. Further, his features are utterly anonymous. He looks like everyone. When Steve Martin turned down SNL’s invitation to portray him, one instantly thought of tons of other people for the job, starting with your Uncle Ned. Vance has the odd dark hirsute haunted vaguely paranoid look that did in Nixon in that televised debate with relaxed handsome clean-shaven JFK. Vance skews retro-Euro, like Valentino.

With both Nixon and Vance you kind of have to search out their deep-set eyes in all their hooded tortured black-rimmed complexity to begin to get any sort of read on them as personalities. Coupled with Trump’s Gustav van Aschenbach vibe (orange makeup, baldness with baroque combover, formal expensive suits), this makes for a less than breezy all-American look.

2.) Midnight! All alone with the cat ladies! Vance’s echt-being is smart-ass Yalie, which means he totally lacks the sweet self-deprecation that would have easily carried him aloft past the cat lady thing and past a lot of other unwary trash talk. Too vain and fragile an ego to make an I fucked up blame it on my youth sort of move, he maroons himself in unlikeability territory. It’s a variant of Trump doubling down on the bogus helicopter story. Totally lacks the ability to say I guess I got it wrong and move on. Trump is threatening to sue the NYT for doubting a story no one corroborates and for which he provides no documentation. Anything other than show humility.

3.) Kah-RAZY Kah-THOLICISM. For those who look deeper than trash talk and weird faces, there’s Vance’s super-reactionary Catholicism, unrecognizable to Catholics up to and including the Pope — a person who adherents like Vance seem to regard as the anti-Pope. Pantingly eager to see America convert to something that looks a lot like a theocracy, Vance is bound to alienate any non-insane religious person.