At just 37, Vivek Ramaswamy has already made a lot of money as a biotechnology entrepreneur and a hedge-fund partner. Now he’s also the third Republican to announce they’re running for president in 2024, after Donald Trump and Nikki Haley. Ramaswamy has no experience in politics, but he apparently feels qualified to be president because he wrote Woke, Inc., a Zeitgeist-surfing 2021 book attacking corporate social-justice and diversity measures (the Ohioan is the son of immigrants from India). This led to The New Yorker dubbing Ramaswamy the “C.E.O. of Anti-Woke, Inc.” and landed him regular guest spots on Tucker Carlson’s show, where he served as a witness to the evils of “woke capitalism” and affirmative action. He’s already made proto-campaign forays into Iowa, where there was reportedly some mutual incomprehension between Ramaswamy and the politicians he encountered. But he did receive respectful attention from Iowa Republicans. Money and ideological media exposure will do that for you.
Ramaswamy is hardly the only GOP presidential candidate trying to exploit resentment of what used to be called “political correctness.” This is Trump’s wheelhouse, most obviously, and it’s also what has made Ron DeSantis the former president’s most popular (if unannounced) challenger. But Ramaswamy does have a positive unifying concept to balance out all the carping: merit. His Wall Street Journal op-ed announcing his candidacy was quite clear on that score: “It may seem presumptuous for a 37-year-old political outsider to pursue the highest office in the land, but I am running on a vision for our nation — one that revives merit in every sphere of American life.
