Vivek's 2024 Presidential Campaign Post-Mortem

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Last year Vivek Ramaswamy launched his campaign for President. He has since stormed the political scene, becoming one of the most notable conservatives rejecting the neo-con establishment in Washington. Although his campaign ended with only 7.8% of the support in Iowa, here I will look at the positive and negative aspects of his campaign and what future politicians could learn for their runs in the future.

The Good

The best part of Vivek’s campaign was the fact that he said the Republican party needs a vision for what America could be.

The Republican Party of Reagan, Bush, and DeSantis has been primarily defined as a party of anti-communism and anti-Islam. They say if we can have a smaller government, the social policy of the Democrats ten years ago, and can bomb anybody that we don’t like, the Republican Party will have won. In recent history, conservatives haven’t explained what it means to be a Republican, and instead have just followed this amorphous blob of ideas that are in large part motivated by special interests.

Therefore, Vivek was absolutely correct to say we need a vision. We need to articulate what America could be when we win. The Liberals have a vision: To Liberate the individual from all constraints so they can become “free.” To compete properly, Vivek is right that we must define what an America First vision is so we can guide our policy in a specific positive direction.

Vivek’s willingness to talk to anybody also definitely boosted his popularity. Oftentimes, politicians don’t seem that bright and can’t defend their ideas from much scrutiny. Vivek on the other hand went on every show possible and did more campaign stops in Iowa than every DeSantis, Haley, and Trump combined. He wanted to get out there as much as possible, and that kind of openness is sparse in today’s politics.

One tactic conservatives could learn from was Vivek’s messaging on abortion. Unlike many of the other candidates, he never gave a hard line on whether he would pursue a nationwide abortion ban. Instead, every time he was asked the abortion question, he referenced the idea that everyone agrees a robber killing a baby in the mother's womb would be murder, and therefore we all believe abortion is murder. In a time where the Abortion question is hurting Republicans electorally, some could take a page out of Vivek’s playbook.

The Bad

Although Vivek was correct on the idea that we need a vision, one of the biggest missed opportunities in the campaign was giving a compelling vision. At some point in every speech, he would talk about his 10 “truths,” but he never outlined a mission statement that guided his ideas about what America should be. Most of these “Truths” were again just anti-liberal and anti-communist statements, instead of positive statements about what America could be.

Vivek’s debate strategy also seemed confused. In the first debate in Milwaukee, he came out fighting, although he did let Haley talk over him a little too much. Then in the second debate in California, he tried to appeal to everyone saying that all the other candidates were largely good people and that they should shy away from personal attacks. Then he flipped back in the third debate, attacking Ronna McDaniel, NBC News, and the other candidates again. Largely it felt like his debate strategy wasn’t refined and could’ve benefited from more preparation.

It was also obviously an error to compete with Trump. He was right to never attack Trump, but that strategy also made him a permanent second fiddle to Trump. His only argument for himself over Trump was that he was a more palatable candidate. He never really had a chance at the presidency because if you can’t criticize your opponents, you will never differentiate yourself and earn yourself people’s votes. His objective might never have been to be the 2024 nominee, but if he was seriously trying to be the nominee he was greatly mistaken in his chances.

The Ugly

The biggest problem with Vivek as a candidate is that he isn’t Christian. Without a specific national religion, you can’t define a specific national purpose from first principles. This would take another full article to fully explain, but America should be a Christian country, and it would be a bad precedent for a conservative leader to be a non-Christian.

The other problem with Vivek’s policy platform was his policy of legal immigration. He advocated for “multiracial working-class” capitalism and that we should have a largely merit-based immigration system. However, although this system might marginally raise GDP, it comes at the cost of hurting the home population.

In addition, although this “high-skill” immigration sounds good on its face, it’s also a national security threat to the United States. As of 2017, around 50% of STEM PhDs in the United States were foreign-born. Every bit of our modern technology and research will be shared with all our foreign adversaries, primarily China. This completely prevents us from doing any sort of Manhattan Project in the future. Lots of foreign-born scientists and PhDs also reduce the wages for American STEM PhDs. This idea that “high-skill” immigration is a pure good because we want the “best and the brightest” falls short when we realize the effect it has on our national security and the wages of Americans.

Conclusion

Vivek will likely have a big future in the conservative movement and is probably eyeing a 2028 run for President after Trump’s term. However, to be successful in the future, he needs to articulate his mission for the country properly so that we go beyond the current dysfunctional state of the current neo-con establishment.