Opinion | ‘He’s a Hint of the Future’: Our Writers on Vivek Ramaswamy

As Republican candidates enter the race for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination, Times columnists, Opinion writers and others will assess their strengths and weaknesses with a scorecard. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of receiving the party’s nomination next summer. This entry assesses Vivek Ramaswamy, a hedge fund analyst turned biotech executive.

How seriously should we take Vivek Ramaswamy’s candidacy?

Frank Bruni In terms of the likelihood of his success, about as seriously as you fear a zombie apocalypse interrupting voting on Election Day. As a parable of unbound ego, it’s a doozy: I’m 37! I have no political experience! Resolute Desk, here I come!

Jane Coaston We should take him seriously, his candidacy, less so.

Michelle Cottle Feel free to enjoy the show, but he’s got a strong flash-then-fizzle vibe.

Ross Douthat Quite seriously as an ideological development: His two personae — as the son of immigrants defending capitalism and meritocracy and the policy entrepreneur promising that you can defeat wokeness by remaking the federal civil rights bureaucracy — indicate the ground where an important part of the right wants to fight its battles. But not seriously as a real presidential contender. He thinks he’s running to be Donald Trump’s vice president; he’s probably actually running to be the next Pete Buttigieg, a second-tier cabinet official with a strong TV presence and a somewhat thankless portfolio.

David French As an eloquent and passionate defender of Trump, quite seriously. As a potential Trump vice president, moderately seriously. As an actual candidate for the Oval Office, not seriously at all.

Michelle Goldberg He’s running a serious campaign to build a right-wing media brand.

Katherine Mangu-Ward If he’s hard-working and lucky, he may someday rival the electoral success of Andrew Yang.

Daniel McCarthy He may not win, but he’s a little like Ron Paul as a candidate who effectively gets a message out.

What matters most about him as a presidential candidate?

Bruni He’s a dependable type in presidential races Republican and Democratic, from Herman Cain to Marianne Williamson: the fresh-faced outsider hoping for the protest vote. If he qualifies for debates — and it appears that he will — he’ll have one big moment and a subsequent week of rapt media attention. But really, this bid is a profile-boosting trial run for the future.

Coaston He appears to be running a facsimile of a presidential campaign. But does Vivek Ramaswamy really, actually, truly wish to be president of the United States? Or does Vivek Ramaswamy simply want to be a person whose name other people know?

Cottle Pretty much every presidential cycle features a fresh face who has figured out how to put a jazzy new spin on an old issue. (Remember Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan?) Ramaswamy’s crusade against “woke capitalism” gives culture warring a hard economic edge. It tells middle- and working-class America: The reason you can’t get ahead isn’t corporate greed or public policy that caters to the rich; it’s because corporate America has been co-opted by the radical left. Very slick.

Douthat In the long run, what his ideological profile says about the future of the right; in the short run, how his effort to simultaneously build his own brand and curry favor with Trump will affect the dynamics between the front-runner and his more serious challengers.

French In the age of the anti-woke tech bro, it was predictable that one would make a run for the White House.

Goldberg Ramaswamy is a decent example of what the political scientist Richard Hanania called the tech right, a movement that combines a hatred of egalitarianism with enthusiasm for rapid technological change.

Mangu-Ward Ramaswamy genuinely appears to like Trump, and more important, the feeling seems to be mutual. He won’t be president, but as Trump’s V.P., Ramaswamy would encourage some of his worst culture-war impulses. He has also already made clear he would pardon Trump if or when he ends up in a position to do so.

McCarthy He’s a hint of the future. Without any political experience, Ramaswamy is outpolling several governors and sometimes a former vice president. His popularity comes from a well-articulated populist, Trump-like ideology.

What do you find most inspiring — or unsettling — about his vision for America?

Bruni I’m going to be positive. I’m going to do “inspiring.” In an age of such profound pessimism, he articulates and, to some degree, represents American possibility. It’s just that his version of that possibility isn’t as inclusive as it could be.

Coaston He seems to think America is primarily concerned with elite culture war, not, say, health care costs. Suggesting that we arm every family of Taiwan with an AR-15 and “raise the voting age” are the kind of ideas you produce when you have no real need to produce actual ideas. This is less a presidential campaign than a corporate brainstorming session.

Cottle The last thing this country needs is another demagogue eager to undermine public faith in the justice system and rule of law in the service of his personal political ambitions. Any policy concerns are secondary when compared with this antidemocratic, Trumpian behavior.

Douthat His style of aspirational, colorblind conservatism can seem inspiring in one moment and cynical the next. He’s delicately balanced between the sincerity of a figure like Tim Scott and the on-the-make hypemanship of a frequent cable-news guest.

French His stance on Ukraine — which would place U.S. aid to Ukraine at profound risk and seek to mandate major concessions to Russia — disqualifies him. He gets the most important foreign policy challenge facing the United States profoundly wrong.

Goldberg Plenty of anti-woke Republicans don’t want young people to vote, but Ramaswamy is actually running on disenfranchising them, with his proposal to raise the voting age to 25 for everyone except those who serve in the military, work as first responders or pass a civics test.

Mangu-Ward I feel about Ramaswamy the way I imagine many liberals and conservatives feel about libertarians: I find his habit of sandwiching reasonable proposals between obviously disastrous ideas disorienting. Prioritize economic growth? Yep. “Use our military to annihilate the Mexican drug cartels south of our own border”? Absolutely not. Push back on some of the excesses of the environmental, social and governance movement? Sure. “Stop measuring CO2 emissions”? What? Why?

McCarthy It’s inspiring to think Ramaswamy might help end two of the most divisive forces in American public life: the racial scoring known as affirmative action and the F.B.I. What’s unsettling is that a replacement for the F.B.I. might be just as abusive.

Imagine you’re a G.O.P. operative or campaign manager. What’s your elevator pitch for a Ramaswamy candidacy?

Bruni If anti-wokeness is general election gold, he sells it with more eloquence, verve and charisma than Ron DeSantis.

Coaston When has a graduate of St. Xavier High School ever gone wrong?

Cottle He’s great on TV and knows how to make grievancemongering fun.

Douthat He can make 16 arguments in the time it takes Joe Biden to wander through a sentence and Kamala Harris to butcher a paragraph.

French Elon Musk isn’t eligible for the presidency, but Vivek Ramaswamy is!

Goldberg If you’re a G.O.P. operative working for Trump, it’s that Ramaswamy might be able to peel off some of the anti-critical-race-theory, anti-diversity-equity-inclusion, anti-environmental-social-governance vote from DeSantis.

Mangu-Ward He’s the millennial variant of the Make America Great Again virus.

McCarthy Vivek Ramaswamy combines the rigorous anti-woke conservatism of DeSantis with the anti-establishment appeal of Trump. He’s smart, young, rich and right.

Ross Douthat, David French and Michelle Goldberg are Times columnists.

Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer.

Michelle Cottle (@mcottle) is a member of the Times’s editorial board.

Jane Coaston is a Times Opinion writer.

Katherine Mangu-Ward (@kmanguward) is the editor in chief of Reason magazine.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of “Modern Age: A Conservative Review.”

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