When JD Vance stepped onto Scottish soil on Wednesday he became the second inhabitant of the White House to visit the country in a month.
The vice-president is believed to be staying in Ayrshire, just north of Galloway, the area he says his forebears left in the 17th Century.
But while his boss, President Donald Trump, is half-Scottish - his mother was born in Lewis in the Western Isles - Vance's claim to Caledonian blood has come under some questioning.
And this is important because in his own way the vice-president is a follower of the modern creed his Maga allies claim to hate - identity politics.
That's loosely defined as people of a particular group - perhaps racial, sexual or social - putting that group's goals ahead of traditional party politics.
