Ramaswamy Reaches for the Presidency The entrepreneur wants Americans to believe in their principles again.
Donald Trump proved that you don’t need to hold elective office before you try for the Oval Office, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is taking that as inspiration as he announced Tuesday that he’s running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. He has a chance to make a contribution to the race even if he is a long shot.
The 37-year-old Ohio native attended Harvard and earned a law degree from Yale, but don’t hold that against him. In 2014 he also founded a biotechnology firm, Roivant Sciences, and served as CEO until 2021. We’ve come to know him over the years through his contributions to these pages, which are provocative and well-wrought even if we disagree.
Mr. Ramaswamy has preternatural energy and can argue his brief with the best of them. He’ll be formidable if he can marshal the polling support to make it onto a debate stage. He was early in campaigning against the woke infection in American business with his 2021 book, “Woke, Inc.”
He’s also been a stalwart voice for free speech against the censorship of the tech giants. His enthusiasms sometimes get carried away, as with his proposal to make political beliefs a legally protected characteristic, like race or religion. If you think companies are woke now, wait until employees can’t be fired for attacking their employers.
He has also made a contribution with his critique of investing on environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria rather than focusing on returns to shareholders. He put his money where his principles are in 2022 in founding Strive Asset Management, which offers an alternative to large asset managers like BlackRock that have become politicized. He rejects the “new climate religion that shackles the U.S. and leaves China untouched.”
Mr. Ramaswamy is also calling for a revival of national self-confidence based on the principles that have lifted all Americans. This means re-embracing the importance of merit again in work and culture, as opposed to leveling based on race, gender and class.
The author Arthur Brooks calls this “earned success,” and it’s an optimistic alternative to the left’s attack on American values that is likely to gain more adherents than grouchy resentment. As the son of Indian immigrants, Mr. Ramaswamy is well-positioned to remind Americans about what draws people to the U.S. He joins former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as GOP candidates of Indian descent. Only in America—or Britain.
Campaigning for the White House has become a vanity project for some people who have no chance—see Marianne Williamson and Dennis Kucinich. Mr. Ramaswamy will have to persuade voters that he’s more than that, as well as overcome doubts about his relative youth. Then again, many voters may prefer the hope of youthful energy over the age and experience of the last six years.
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