For the most part, former governor Chris Christie is just a bag of recycled parts. A ragged engine, burning oil from Jeb Bush’s campaign, a sagging chassis from donor class Republicans, and generously convex body panels from the artisans at Krispy Kreme.
Despite his ho-hum establishmentarianism, Christie delivered the best line of last week’s Republican debate — a magnificent gut-punch to the professionally manicured, and carefully calculated millennial patter of Vivek Ramaswamy.
Christie bombed Vivek with what was surely the creation of a talented aide. Interrupting one of Vivek’s characteristically pompous soliloquies, Christie quipped, “I’ve had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT.”
Mic drop. Christie should have walked off the stage at that moment.
The self-described “skinny guy with a funny last name” stood for a moment and stretched his well rehearsed grin, stunned by the explosive shockwave. The momentary silence was a welcome reprieve from the incessant pontificating from the young Ramaswamy. His mechanical guffawing seems more like a prosthetic than genuine mirth.
Vivek’s debate performance made me feel like I was watching an AI programmed to sell something…anything. I’m just not buying the vaudevillian gesticulations and the reflexive, overwrought giggling that feels a little manic. He came off like a Blade Runner replicant, a Roy Batty with a maniacal gleam in his eye. I get an unsettled feeling, a creeping suspicion that Ramaswamy doesn’t celebrate a birthday, but rather an activation date.
I tend to go with my gut feeling about people, and I’m rarely wrong. A career in law enforcement hones your ability to size people up quickly. And, I’d feel more confident with Park and Recreation’s Jean-Ralphio Saperstien running the country. Though Vivek and Jean-Ralphio are in many ways analogs, Jean-Ralphio lacks the cynicism evident in Vivek’s too well practiced populist pander.
He’s selling the Republican version of “hope and change.” Sure, he’s got a platform with enumerated planks, but just like Obama, he’s really about the sell. He’s telling you what he knows you want to hear while pantomiming sympathy, sincerity, and virtue. He’s got the conman stink, and I can smell it a mile away.
Christie’s only victory, however brief, visibly stunned Vivek, which he tried to cover with feigned amusement. In that translucent moment, he was unable to channel his alter ego, “Da Vek” a bard of the street, a lyricist with all the credibility of a middle class kid, forced to navigate the deadly streets of Cambridge while pursuing an ivy league education.
Authenticity is not a word that springs to mind when describing Ramaswamy’s rapp persona, or any other permutation of this manicured avatar. Vivek graduated with a biology degree from Harvard, and then a law degree from Yale. At 38, he owns a two million dollar estate in Ohio. In 2014, he founded a biotech company, Roivant Sciences. His current net worth is estimated at 630 million dollars. Vivek’s successes are to be congratulated, but please spare us the man of the people and Eminem cultural appropriation act.
His performance during the debate was characterized by machine-gunning shrink wrapped packages of glossy populisms — the debate version of laying down hooks and creating flow. He’s his own hype-man and excels in stringing together long trains of lyrical tripe.
Vivek basked in the lights and attention, counseling everyone in his annoyingly pedantic way, that he was there to have a good time, and all the other candidates should join in his earthy frivolity. Well, I for one, am not interested in presidential candidates having a good time during a national debate. I’m interested in substance, real answers to the critical problems facing our nation such as DOJ and FBI weaponization.
While Senator Tim Scott was attempting to deliver a substantive answer to the DOJ/FBI weaponization question, Vivek interrupted like a spastic adolescent, blowing one of his favorite dog whistles. “Shut down the FBI, actually have the courage to get it right!” It’s the same reductionist sloganeering some other personalities traffic for their own benefit.
This is a promise Vivek knows he can’t keep. But, for people who are politicians down to their soul, the ends easily justify the means. The abolish the FBI narrative plays directly into the hands of our adversaries, and Vivek, though vapid, isn’t stupid. He’s cunning and willing to manipulate the useful idiots among us to seize the power he lusts after.
There are other serious problems with Ramaswamy. He’s completely inconsistent on the issue of climate change. Inconsistency being the hallmark of the professional politicker. During the debate, he passionately mocked the idea that climate change is a product of human activity, and went so far as to assert that he was the only person participating in the debate that was not “bought and paid for.” However, approximately five months ago, Ramaswamy stated he did think climate change was real and is, in part, due to human activity.
Another major problem with Vivek is his foreign policy position on Israel. He stated to actor and podcaster Russell Brand that he wants to end U.S. aid to Israel in 2028. That’s a foreign policy decision even the demented Joe Biden hasn’t suggested. Israel is the middle east’s only true democracy, our close partner, and the only bulwark against the ever encroaching totalitarian Iranian regime. Buffoonish hardly describes the scale of Ramaswamy’s reckless naiveté on this point. Perhaps, someone on his staff should remind him that Trump accomplished moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in an unequivocal effort to strengthen our bonds with our critical ally.
Ramaswamy is an interloper among serious men and women. He may pay lip service to Trump, but he’s only playing an angle. Hopefully, very soon, Vivek will slink away and join the long line of political oddities stored on the dusty curio shelf of history.
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