At 38 years old, Vivek Ramaswamy became one of the 20 youngest billionaires in the nation, according to Forbes's estimation. He did so not primarily through opining on woke corporatism or becoming a fixture on cable news but rather through the meritocratic tedium of biotech investing. His wife is an elite laryngologist in her own right, and the couple has two not-yet-school-aged children.

The oddest thing about riding on Ramaswamy's tour bus in rural Iowa was realizing that anyone else in his position would be happier doing literally anything else other than running for president.

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Mr. and Mrs. Ramaswamy are the paragon of the fruits of Indian-American parenting, both at the pinnacles of their respective careers and happily domiciled in Ohio. If Ramaswamy wanted a second act as a politician, he could face a favorable race challenging incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown's Senate seat or wait out Mike DeWine's second and last term as governor.

Again, Ramaswamy is 38. He has nothing but time if he simply wanted to maximize his odds of winning a high-profile public office. And yet, Ramaswamy has elected to spend his time and his millions trudging through civic centers in New Hampshire.

Unlike certain other candidates who have irked donors by draining their coffers to fly private, Ramaswamy can fund his own private travel, but for a billionaire, his tastes are shockingly modest. When his campaign lets me venture to the back of his bus to interview him about monetary policy and ethanol subsidies, he's eating microwaved leftovers of homemade food. His wife, who schedules her surgeries during the middle of the week, will fly in on the weekends with the family, and car seats are strapped on a bench in the bus.

It's hard to believe that any millennial billionaire, especially one with as telegenic a family as Ramaswamy's, would willingly choose to do this. That is, unless Ramaswamy actually wants to be president.

Despite the countervailing narrative that Ramaswamy is a Manchurian candidate clandestinely operating on behalf of Donald Trump, all the evidence has convinced me that the entrepreneur seriously wants to win in his own right.

Somehow, this young son of immigrants has caught fire not just in national polling, where he is running third after the former president and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, but also in the lily-white exurbs of Iowa. I reported in live time when Ramaswamy went viral for inviting a distraught pro-choice heckler to speak, but perhaps more shocking is watching these disproportionately old, white, twice-Trump-supporting crowds become transfixed by a Hindu promising to bring about a cultural revival of Judeo-Christian ethics.

Thanks to Trump's cowardice in refusing to show up to the inaugural primary debate, Ramaswamy will take center stage with the Florida governor. While Ramaswamy is well known to insiders and careful cable news viewers, this is his debut to the greater nation. The stakes are high, and the expectations even higher. While the majority of Republicans polled by Morning Consult said that they would expect Trump to perform the best if he attended the debate, Ramaswamy came in second. He has also eclipsed DeSantis, for the first time ever, in Morning Consult's favorability.

But Ramaswamy has to prove that he is serious.

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While he can defend Trump on the merits, Ramaswamy has to prove to both the donors and the electorate that he genuinely believes that he, not Trump, is the man for the moment and that "Conservative Inc." is wrong in its assumption that he's auditioning for a Trump Cabinet position. Lower-information voters tuning in for the first time won't care much over the media fracas about Ramaswamy's 9/11 remarks. But a voter can smell poppycock from a mile away.

Maybe I'm being duped, but if Ramaswamy is serious, tonight is the night to prove it. That means selling himself, not running interference for Trump. If he plays it right, it could be him staring down the former president at the center of the next debate stage.