The Echo

-Mahi Jamuar

Vivek Ramaswamy in the 2024 Elections

-Mahi Jamuar

“To put America first, we have to discover what America is.” – Vivek Ramaswamy 

Vivek Ramaswamy is a dichotomy in the 2024 American Presidential Elections. As a Republican candidate, he promotes right wing and conservative policies. As a multimillionaire entrepreneur with degrees from both Harvard and Yale, he has managed to achieve astounding levels of success at the age of 38. 

So, why has this young aspirant had such an impact on the elections? Well, his words speak for themselves. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Vivek Ramaswamy is 36.8% there with his book Woke Inc. which highlights his opinions on the corporate world and its usage of social issues for profit. The ‘C.E.O. of Anti-Woke Inc.,’ as he was affectionately dubbed by the New York Times, is bold and speaks his mind without hesitation. He is against abortion, except in certain cases, and believes that affirmative action is the largest form of institutionalised racism. 

With Rishi Sunak as the Prime Minister of the U.K. since 2022 and Kamala Harris as the current Vice President of the United States, it would be a win for Indians everywhere to see Vivek Ramaswamy as POTUS. What is interesting to note is that Ramaswamy is not, in fact, the only Indian-origin candidate this election season. Along with former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and engineer Hirsh Vardhan Singh, he is the third Indian American in the race. 

As India-Canada relations go downhill, stronger ties with the Americans would be beneficial, not only for the Indians. Vivek Ramaswamy believes the U.S. economy has become dependent on China, and working with India would help America defeat ‘communist China’. He hopes for a military relationship in the Andaman Sea to cut off China’s oil supply. This, along with many more companies opening headquarters and manufacturing plants in India, brings about a promising future for the Indian economy. 

Ramaswamy is a bit of a living oxymoron. He has called the social media platform TikTok ‘digital fentanyl’, a poison to the minds of children. Yet he joined TikTok himself as a way to better engage with the younger audience. He also believes in raising the voting age to 25. He seems to be an avid Trump supporter and one of the few endorsers of Donald J. Trump, who is currently out on bail after facing over 90 criminal counts. But Ramaswamy runs against Trump in the elections. He is the child of immigrants and still recently spoke about banning citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. And if the reader still doesn’t believe that Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy is truly living on the edge, let me make it clear: he wants to abolish the FBI. 

Watching election campaigns is like trying to differentiate burgundy from maroon. Everyone does questionable things. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone does something wrong. So if the president is supposed to be someone who has no flaws, then he is not human, in which case we might have bigger problems to deal with. In this marathon to see who can better save the nation than the person who we thought could save the nation last time, it is not about who is right; instead, it is about who is the least wrong. Soon, time will tell, if in this painting of maroon and burgundy, Vivek Ramaswamy is scarlet.