A political outsider, who has made his wealth through private enterprise, blindsides the country by entering the GOP presidential field.
Sound familiar? The story of 2016 is one of the most interesting political developments in our nation’s history. Appealing to the grievances of the forgotten masses, a man with no political experience rose to the highest office in the land. But in 2024, there is a similarly unanticipated candidate in the field – and it isn’t Donald Trump.
Vivek Ramaswamy was born in Cincinnati in 1985. If elected, he would be the youngest president ever. But why is he running, and why does he have a solid chance at pushing past both Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis?
In his campaign video, Ramaswamy touts a “new American dream.” As he posted on the social media platform X: “We’re not just running from something. We’re running *to* something.”
In Ramaswamy’s view, America is experiencing an identity crisis. People cannot agree on America’s core values, or on what it means to be American. This division is not hard to see, and has been the subject of many a political column in the past decade.
But Ramaswamy is approaching this division from a unique angle. Rather than outlining a bulleted list of his stances on issues, Ramaswamy has engineered a central ethic from which positive solutions can grow.
In one of the most-watched TED Talks ever (with 18 million views), Simon Sinek discusses the Golden Circle. According to this principle, people will not respond to logistics – the how and what of a thing – until presented with the why – the reason for doing it.
The application of this idea to the political realm is simple. Throughout the 2024 race, candidates have espoused their views on a myriad of issues – abortion, guns, transgenderism, Ukraine, etc. These issues comprise the outer rings of the Golden Circle – the how and the what.
But Ramaswamy, rather than attacking these issues one at a time, goes right to the heart of the Golden Circle, explaining that the root cause of our problem is a lack of national identity and individual purpose.
This message will resonate with Generation Z, which is just coming of age to vote. America’s youth are hungry for meaning. Jordan Peterson, a public intellectual, has in recent years garnered a following of millions. Most of his viewers are young men. Ramaswamy will pull in a similar audience, as he espouses a clear vision of American identity and individual responsibility.
That clear vision is this: each individual is responsible to himself, his family, his nation, and God. This clear outlining of responsibilities, in Ramaswamy’s view, will give momentum and direction to a rudderless society.
And his message strikes a much deeper chord than DeSantis’ “never back down” stance or Trump’s “Make America Great Again.” The Ramaswamy campaign aims at the core of American identity, and it will jettison the political outsider to the White House.
In conclusion, and in candor: the Vivek 2024 campaign is spearheading an American revival. Individual responsibility, merit, American exceptionalism, the nuclear family, patriotism: these things are making a comeback. And they will come back, most assuredly and effectively, under the Ramaswamy administration.
