Vivek in Sioux City, by “Cornhead”
Here’s a post by commenter “Cornhead”, who went last week to see Vivek Ramaswamy speak and answer questions from the audience. Cornhead – aka David Begley – was impressed, writing that the appearance featured “intensely interesting and intellectually thrilling dialogue.”
I don’t see Vivek as having a chance for the GOP nomination. But he’s clearly a very intelligent guy.
I have sent Vivek’s campaign some bucks and have bought his book, simply to support his brave effort. That he is deemed to have no chance in succeeding says nothing good about our media,our politics, our dumbed-down nation.
Sure, Cicero — but will he rise? In other’s estimation? I’m sure he will.
Vivek is impressive, but he’s either uninformed or just another hopeful being dishonest about biofuels in order to gain momentum in Iowa. I doubt any of the others will differ in their stances.
So…if he’s another in the line of “would be good but not an ice cube’s chance in Hell,” what’s his real goal? If he’s as clever as he seems… where does he really want to be when the dust settles?
As of 6/26 he is polling at 2.5% in fivethirtyeight average.
Is that enough to get him on the stage at the debates? I can think of a couple candidates that would prefer not. Hopefully he can break through the media black wall and get his numbers up enough to get a spot. More choices are usually better.
Personally I have only seen a very small amount of information on him (or any of the second tier candidates save Christy and Pence.) So I can’t say I support him. But I’d sure like to learn enough to form an opinion. I guess it’s on me to do the research.
Mr. Ramaswamy certainly sounds better than the competition.
I have watched several of Vivek’s interviews on TV. Wha impresses me is his ability to handle gotcha questions. Very quick thinking on his feet. He’s also good on the issues and has what I consider an engaging personality.
If he makes it to the first debate, I think a lot of people will be surprised and impressed. One good thing is that the MSM is not worried about him, so they’re not sliming him much yet. If he picks up support, that will change.
He probably has no chance of winning the nomination. Should a Republican become POTUS, I think he would make an excellent cabinet member – Secretary of Energy, head of HHS, or head of the EPA.
I’ve seen Vivek speak a couple of times and I’m reading his book Woke Inc. Yes, he is a very smart and an energetic speaker. Compared to most candidates he seems to be playing in another league. I agree that he doesn’t have much chance in 2024 but at least he is getting his name out there. He gives a lot of speeches to Republican clubs around the country and I think is slowly building a following.
I’d like to see whoever gets the nomination put him in charge of draining the swamp and reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy. I envision his job as akin to the Bobs from Office Space. I spent most of my career working for the federal government and I’d love to see someone just come in and ask “What is it exactly that you do here?”.
I know this isn’t a likely scenario but I can dream.
Vivek is from Ohio. Ohio is always an important state to win. The conventional wisdom is that the VP is picked in order to win a big or important state although that hasn’t really been true in recent years.
Vivek has supported Trump and, as far as I know, hasn’t attacked Ron.
Thanks for the click throughs.
I spent most of my career working for the federal government and I’d love to see someone just come in and ask “What is it exactly that you do here?”.
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IMO, that’s a question you ask of employees of federal agencies who have a defensible (if notional) mission. There’s quite a list of agencies which should disappear or which should disappear once you’ve excised some small fragment of them, because their mission is something outside the ken of what is advisable for the central government. And all but a few federal agencies need to be stripped of their franchise to make ‘grants, subsidies, and contributions’.
Thanks for the report, Cornead. I have been watching Ramaswamy, hoping he could find a way into politics. I am still skeptical, but hopeful too.
JJ: Your suggestion that he be tapped to head Energy, EPA or HHS is contrarian: those are three executive departments that should be on the list for shuttering, and I think he would agree with that proposition.
I will send him a monetary donation to improve his chance to end up on the debate stage. And we all need to talk his candidacy up! He has to get above 2%.
to Older and Wheezier: biofuels are a terrible idea, a palliative for the nutty enviros, but they buy corngrower votes in Iowa, as you suggest. Let’s stick with our plentiful petroleum deposits, please! And eat our corn.
Vivek reminds me of this old chestnut:
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Woman: Governor, you have the vote of every thinking person!
Adlai Stevenson: That’s not enough, madam. We need a majority!
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As usual, this is another good quote which is too good to be true. There is no substantial evidence that Stevenson ever said anything like it.
But Stevenson was the thinking man’s politician in the fifties, while Eisenhower was written off in liberal circles as a doddering old ex-military guy (though we know better now).
So it did sum up Stevenson’s campaigns against Eisenhower which Stevenson lost by a landslide both times.
Stevenson is correctly quoted: “Never run against a war hero.” Not without its truth.
Reading through Adlai Stevenson’s wikiquotes tonight, I find myself touched by his overall decency and thoughtfulness. He may have had intellectual pretensions when it came to his superiority over Eisenhower, but he was playing by the Grand Old Liberal standards well and I miss that.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adlai_Stevenson_II
I for one would be quite interested in what Adlai Stevenson might say about today’s Democrat Party. I rather suspect he would find himself more compatible with Vivek.
F: “JJ: Your suggestion that he be tapped to head Energy, EPA or HHS is contrarian: those are three executive departments that should be on the list for shuttering, and I think he would agree with that proposition.”
A good observation. He’s a businessman. I think he would at least cut some of the fat.
Can Ramaswamy become a finalist in the Candidate Sweepstakes?
No.
Can he influence the direction the Finalist takes?
I damn sure hope so.
RE: Ramaswamy as a cabinet agency head.
Wrong question. Even more wrong answer. Trump failed right up front with DOE by putting DeVos in charge. DeVos was a Nice Person Who Believes Education Can Be Reformed. She should have been charged with “you have 4 years to zero everything out and turn where the building now stands into a grass-covered picnic area.”
It cannot be reformed, only eradicated and completely replaced by a functional system that incorporates rigid goals with reliable and highly visible performance metrics bound by an enforceable compliance structure. Who provides the enforcement is the really big question here.
The same is true of nearly every federal agency; most need to be abolished, the remaining very few need the same rigid goals with reliable and highly visible performance metrics bound by an enforceable structure. Anything else is mere political playacting, and we should have learned enough about that by now to realize how toxic it is.
He is young, he is starting out in politics, as we have learned from Obama and Trump, it’s not bad to start out at the top. I’m not expecting him to win this time, but I expect him to hang around and eventually get to the WH.
Vivek doesn’t really have a constituency anywhere. Indian Americans aren’t going to vote as a bloc for him. Trump doesn’t need him to win Ohio. Smart guy, but as Andrew Yang could tell you, smart guys don’t always finish first.
Vivek, or someone like him, would have made a good chief policy advisor for Trump. Maybe a good Chief of Staff. As a newcomer to Washington, though, Trump probably needed, or thought he needed, someone with Washington DC experience. That’s the trap that Trump was in, and will be in again if he’s elected: he needs people who understand the system, but for the most part they have already become creatures of the system.
Cabinet departments aren’t likely to be abolished. Cabinet secretaries will have to muddle through as best they can. Plans for closing or consolidating agencies, like other policy plans, usually don’t go very far in DC. Neither do candidates with bristling packages of policies. Voters, if they ever really have to make a decision, tend to go for a candidate with a “narrative.” Then the policy projects are ignored or fail to get through Congress. Biden was different, and we got his policies with a vengeance (because voters liked his, or the anti-Trump, narrative enough to vote for him).
Stevenson wasn’t as bright or as intellectual as his supporters believed, but he did have a thoughtful temperament, or at least gave the impression of having one. His misfortune, other than running against a war hero, was that voters assumed he was indecisive, as thoughtful people often are.
I flew with a Captain in 1970 who was a co-pilot on Eisenhower’s campaign plane in 1952. He said that Eisenhower’s kindly grandfather image camouflaged a very tough and determined man. During flights Eisenhower would order the co-pilot out of his seat and spend time with maps figuring where the Interstate Highways could go. Never really friendly with the crew, he was all business all the time. Sounded about right for a General who directed the liberation of Europe.
Eisenhower was not an intellectual but was wise enough to foresee the dangers of the military-industrial complex. A warning which, unfortunately, we have not taken seriously.
https://www.bing.com/search?q=eisenhower%27s+farewell+speech+text&form=ANNTH1&refig=c1b6003c065d41f38d55f8be72448106&sp=2&lq=0&qs=SC&pq=eisenhower%27s+farewll+speech&sk=SC1&sc=2-27&cvid=c1b6003c065d41f38d55f8be72448106
I cast my first vote for POTUS in 1956. I was impressed by Stevenson’s wit and intellectualism. I believed Eisenhower had done a good job in his first term, but was not well informed about the basic differences between Democrats and Republicans. I wasn’t strongly motivated one way or the other. I was a typical LIV. In the end, I voted for Eisenhower because I believed he had proved himself.
By the time Kennedy was running against Nixon, I had learned much more about the party differences. I was a big Nixon supporter. Other than a moment of insanity when I voted for Perot in 1992, I’ve voted straight GOP since 1956.
JJ: “I cast my first vote for POTUS in 1956.”
Wow, that means you are well into your ninth decade or possibly even through it. That is impressive in itself. Even more impressive is that you are still one of the most thoughtful and insightful commenters here. Having all that experience doesn’t hurt.
Your math nis pretty good, FOAF. I’m 90.
Thanks for the compliment. I’ll tell my wife how insightful I am. She’ll get a kick out of that. 🙂
I flew with a Captain in 1970 who was a co-pilot on Eisenhower’s campaign plane in 1952. He said that Eisenhower’s kindly grandfather image camouflaged a very tough and determined man…
JJ:
I’m sure! Thanks for your account. Boy, when I think about D-Day and Eisenhower’s role…
Ike is somewhere up there with Washington and Lincoln for his competence, spirit and, I would say, humility.