COLUMBUS, Ohio — Vivek Ramaswamy is sitting in his home in the heartland state that holds the distinction of sending more presidents to the White House than any other. The biotech entrepreneur is multitasking like any father working from his home office — simultaneously enjoying his toddler darting back and forth and getting ready to launch his run for the Republican nomination for president the next day.
Ramaswamy is a unique mix of blue-collar Cincinnati roots and an Ivy League education. (He attended both Harvard and Yale.) He shows off his Cincinnati street cred when he discusses everyone's favorite local chili restaurant. “You know they have now have it here in Columbus,” he says of the iconic Skyline Chili restaurant chain beloved in the region.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY ANNOUNCES CANDIDACY FOR 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Ramaswamy said in an interview with the Washington Examiner in the living room of his suburban home, the day before he was to announce his intentions on Fox News host Tucker Carlson's show. He made the decision to run for the party’s nomination within the past few months, two years after briefly considering running for Senate when Republican Sen. Rob Portman announced his retirement.
In retrospect, he’s glad he didn’t make that move because he was in the middle of writing his book Woke, Inc., and the timing just wasn’t right.
Today, he is ready. He brings a message that rests firmly on his belief that America is missing a vision of national identity, and he sees himself as the only person who can deliver it properly.
“If you ask most people what it means to be American today, you got a blank stare in response,” Ramaswamy said. “I have a vision on what the answer to that question ought to be is the national identity centered on excellence, on the revival of merit and excellence in every sphere of our lives. ... It is the guiding light of why I am doing this. If this message were the kind of thing that I could in a high fidelity way give to someone else and hand off to who had the political experience and appetite to go do this, I would've done it."
Ramaswamy, who at 37 has been wildly successful in his young career, said he is not doing this because he covets the office of president. Rather, he said, it is because it must be done now.
“I think the nature of the moment we live in and the national identity crisis we're in the middle of right now and the nature of my message ... actually made me come around to the idea that I think I might be better for this moment than I would be at that job even 20 or 30 years from now,” he said.
Ramaswamy, the first Republican millennial candidate for president, is the third candidate in the race. He follows former President Donald Trump, who announced last November, and former South Carolina GOP Gov. and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who announced last week.
Speculation has been growing since my interview with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) last week that he is considering running after his current legislative session ends this spring. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) have also been making noise they are considering jumping in.
Ramaswamy burst onto the conservative scene in two years ago with his blunt criticism of what he calls “woke capitalism.” His 2021 New York Times bestseller, Woke, Inc., makes the case against politics in business and outlines principles for a new vision for American capitalism going forward.
He has campaign stops planned in Iowa and New Hampshire on Wednesday and Thursday of this week; he’s hired former Pennsylvania Senate Republican candidate Kathy Barnett to run his grassroots operations in those early primary states.
Ramaswamy said he likes Trump and admires that he came to the presidency as an outsider to the process — so much that he embraces that as his model. Like Trump before he assumed office in 2017, Ramaswamy has no prior experience in politics.
He said he is aware of Trump having a reaction to people running against him, and he smiles and shrugs. He says he is prepared for his or anyone else’s reaction.
“I think ... 2023 should be not about me, not about Nikki, not about Donald Trump, not about Ron DeSantis," he said. "It should be about the what and the why. Once we have a clearly defined sense for the answer to that question, the who I think becomes a lot easier, and people can make that decision with clear eyes once we've defined what it is we care to advance."
Ramaswamy said the conservative movement needs to be about the what. “Stop arguing over [House Speaker] Kevin McCarthy or Donald Trump," he said. "Forget about it. Table it. Put it to one side. Those are just symptoms of the fact that this movement and this party does not even know exactly what it's supposed to stand for. I want to fill that void. I think you could say anything about that party as you could say about America as a whole. We've forgotten our sense of what we actually stand for."
Republican strategist Curt Anderson tells me he admires Ramaswamy's guts. “Vivek arms conservatives with the vocabulary and logic they need to fight back against the clever insanity of the Left,” he said. Anderson, who is not working on his campaign, said people will understandably discount Ramaswamy because of his age and lack of political experience. “But I suggest keeping your eye on him,” he added.
Anderson expects other candidates will steal material from him, “as his messaging is spot on” for the moment.
“Excellence is unifying — embracing the extremism of those revolutionary ideas in the present moment," said Ramaswamy. "My theory of national unity is not to show up in the middle — 'Can't we all get along, guys?' 'Kumbaya' and compromise. No, I don't think we have a standing chance of national unity on that basis. But I do believe in embracing the extremism of the ideas, like the unapologetic pursuit of excellence in this country. That I think is the common thread that actually unites us across this country, and that is my message to the country.”