I have nothing personal against Vivek Ramaswamy. Nor do I harbor any affinity toward him.

In sum, when I think of Ramaswamy, I think of…

Nothing.

Obvious questions: Is he a nice, decent guy? A sonovogun? Compassionate when kindness is suitable to the situation? Tough as nails?

Anyone who ever has dated — and later married the guy or lady — knows you never really know what a person is all about until you either (i) find out you hit the jackpot, or (ii) have your initial free consult with a divorce lawyer.

You never know. You hear what they say. You watch how they hold their cutlery: American style with the fork in the right hand, the knife in the left, and then the quick switcheroo and back … or the European way with the knife in the right and the fork in the left from the opening bell until the final count? If he does it European style but is American, who is he kidding (unless he’s in the foreign service and needs to impress on countries below our American station that he is as cultured as they are when they dial 911 to ask for American aid)?

You look for clues. The way they dress. The way they talk. Do they talk with food in their mouths? If so, do they cover with a hand or let you just watch the process of mastication?

Does she have the devil-may-care self-confidence to order spilly soup or long-string red-tomato-sauce pasta on a first date? While wearing white clothes? After Labor Day?

Did he show up wearing a suit, or sports coat and slacks, with a tie and white shirt? For a date at the beach? Or how about a suit, tie, and neckless T-shirt?

So many things to look for. We look for clues because what more can we do when we know absolutely nothing about the person except that Aunt Mabel says her girlfriend’s niece believes this lady’s best quality is her skill in playing Jenga? The pieces never fall.

That is how I feel about Ramaswamy:

Really? For president of the United States of America, the leader of the Free World?

He is going to stand up to Putin? Tough-talk Zelensky? Intimidate Nasrallah of Hezbollah into remaining tame while Israel does to Hamas in Gaza what it should have done 18 years ago?

Ramaswamy?

I don’t care about the name. Name-shaming is his game as he mocks Nikki Haley for calling herself by her husband’s surname as all non-woke-feminists do and by her given middle name. His name does not matter. It never should. It could be “Smith” or “Jones” for all I care.

But Ramaswamy the person?

He’s like that New Age Democrat woman author or poet or life coach or whatever she is, who runs for president every four years and always ends a debate with a pre-packaged New Age inspirational message to eat keto-friendly foods and attain a worthy personal mantra that, as long as you keep it secret, no one else will know the Guru gives all his followers the same one.

Are Republicans seriously considering voting for this guy to be the POTUS? Really? Seriously? When do we wake up?

I get that he legitimately manages to qualify for the debates — and, yes, that is cool. It is a thing. He has outlasted a former vice president, Mike Pence, and a governor or two. He is able to raise megabucks from the official minimum number of individual donors — and good for him. That buys him a ticket on the stage. But…

Ramaswamy?

Why do people even discuss him? I am doing so only because no one else but me has figured out this is a remarkable joke and commentary on the American body politic. We now have reached our lowest nadir since Ralph helped Bush II beat Gore in Florida. Ramaswamy?

To be the president of the United States of America is not a game but a serious thing. Hundreds of millions, actually billions, of lives hang in the balance as the president governs. His policies and decisions impact the millions who wish to enter America illegally and so many others, American citizens, whose safety and security and economic well-being are impacted by their presence or absence. POTUS decides whether — and how — America stands with allies like Israel and Ukraine, what weapons we do or do not send, how many billions we allocate or not. Do we send $6 billion to ayatollahs to finance international jihad from Houthis in Yemen to Hezbollah in South Lebanon to Hamas in Gaza to Shiite insurgents in Iraq? Or do we starve those ayatollahs to death, drive them into bankruptcy, lock off their oil, and foment revolution in their lands?

Do we declare war on fossil fuels and drive gas prices at the pump to $6 a gallon, wiping out family budgets and setting off a chain of price spurts for everything that relies on that fuel? If gas goes up, trucking costs go up, and food goes up and home heating goes up and airfares go up. If food goes up and gas goes up and transportation goes up, then people need more money to buy essentials to stay alive, so salaries go up and federal “safety net” payouts go up. Inflation sends the entire economy out of whack. The current president has shown he can do that almost singlehandedly.

The American president can continue devastatingly fatal woke forestry practices that give rise to horrific and deadly wildfires, or he can return the country to wise and proven forestry that prevents those tragedies. So many deadly blazes in our nation’s forests trace directly to power companies making hard and fatal decisions to stop spending on safety and prevention in order to meet foolish climate goals that no other nation on earth cares to parallel or will.

The president will name federal trial judges on the district court level and appellate judges, as well as Supreme Court justices whose rulings not only will decide the cases before them but will define or alter an era’s approach to culture and social values.

The American presidency is the most serious of stuff. We cannot afford to get it wrong, but we usually do anyway. Most of the ones we elect are mediocrities if not outright disasters. But at least we have a chance to inspect their records, their prior successes, failures, and abilities to work under the harsh spotlight of a cruel and character-assassinating media and to appease voters who are mostly fickle. How does he or she handle the opposing party and their never-ending sniping and back-stabbing? And how handle the snipers and stabbers in their own party?

For all this, we need some idea of what the guy actually has done in the past, over at least a few years in the arena, not merely what he promises. We know his promises are mostly lies anyway, or unattainable honest aspirations, so the record matters.

If we are serious after three GOP presidential debates — even though we know Donald Trump is going to be the nominee, like it or not — we owe it to ourselves to begin asking more loudly:

Ramaswamy?