For the most part, former Gov. Chris Christie is just a bag of recycled parts. A jagged engine, burning oil from the Jeb Bush campaign, a flexing chassis from donor-class Republicans, and ornately embossed body panels crafted by the craftsmen at Krispy Kreme.
Despite his monotonous establishmentism, Christie delivered the best line of last week’s Republican debate – a brilliant jab at Vivek Ramaswamy’s professionally manicured and carefully calculated millennial patter.
Christie bombarded Vivek with what was clearly the work of a talented midfielder. Interrupting one of Vivek’s characteristically pompous monologues, Christie joked“I’m tired of the guy who sounds like ChatGPT.”
Microphone drop. Christie should have left the stage at this point.
The self-proclaimed “skinny guy with a funny name” stood up for a moment and stretched out a practiced smile, stunned by the explosive shockwave. The momentary silence was a welcome respite from teenage Ramaswamy’s incessant pontificating. His mechanical giggling sounds more like a prosthetic than genuine hilarity.
Vivek’s performance during the debate made me feel like I was watching an artificial intelligence programmed to sell something… anything. I just don’t buy the vaudeville gestures and reflexive, overwrought giggling that comes off as a bit manic. He came off like a Blade Runner replicant, Roy Batty, with a maniacal glint in his eye. I feel uneasy, a growing suspicion that Ramaswamy is not celebrating a birthday, but an activation date.
I usually go by my gut feeling about people and I’m rarely wrong. A career in law enforcement hones your ability to quickly judge people. I would feel more confident if the country was led by Park and Recreation’s Jean-Ralphio Saperstien. Although Vivec and Jean-Ralphio are in many ways parallels, Jean-Ralphio lacks the cynicism evident in Vivec’s all-too-well-practiced populist coddling.
He sells the Republican version of “hope and change.” Sure, he has a platform with calculated boards, but like Obama, he really cares about sales. He tells you what he knows you want to hear, simulating compassion, sincerity, and virtue. He has the stink of a cheater and I can smell it from a mile away.
Christie’s one victory, however brief, clearly stunned Vivec, who tried to hide his amusement. In that lucid moment, he was unable to channel his alter ego, “Da Vek”, a street bard, songwriter with all the credibility of a middle-class kid forced to navigate the deadly streets of Cambridge while earning an ivy league education.
Authenticity is not a word that comes to mind when describing Ramaswamy’s rap persona or any other variation of this manicured avatar. Vivek graduated with a degree in biology from Harvard and then a law degree from Yale. He is 38 years aged and owns a $2 million estate in Ohio. In 2014, he founded the biotechnology company Roivant Sciences. His current fortune is estimated at $630 million. Vivek’s success should be congratulated, but please spare us the man of the people and Eminem’s cultural appropriation bill.
His debate performance was characterized by machine-gunned shrink-wrapped packages of glossy populisms—the debate version of setting hooks and creating flow. He is his own noisemaker and specializes in stringing together long strings of lyrical tripe.
Vivek basked in the lights and attention, advising everyone in his annoyingly pedantic way that he was there to have a good time and all the other candidates should join in his earthly frivolity. Well, I, for one, have no interest in presidential candidates having fun during a national debate. I’m interested in substantive, real answers to critical issues facing our nation, such as weaponizing the Department of Justice and the FBI.
While Senator Tim Scott was trying to give a substantive answer to a DOJ/FBI question about guns, Vivek interrupted him like a spasmodic teenager by blowing into one of his favorite dog whistles. “Shut down the FBI, have the courage to do it right!” It is the same reductionist slogan proclaiming the movement of other personalities for their own benefit.
It’s a promise Vivek knows he can’t keep. But for people who are politicians to the core, the ends easily justify the means. Taking down the FBI narrative works directly to the advantage of our adversaries, and Vivek, while dull, is not stupid. He is cunning and willing to manipulate the useful idiots among us to gain the power he desires.
There are other stern problems with Ramaswamy. He is completely inconsistent on climate change. Inconsistency is the hallmark of a professional politician. During the debate, he passionately mocked the notion that climate change is the result of human activity, even going so far as to say that he was the only person in the debate who had not been “bought and paid for”. However, about five months ago Ramaswamy stated he actually believed that climate change was real and partly due to human activity.
Another major problem for Vivek is his foreign policy stance towards Israel. He stated actor and podcast host Russell Brand that he wants to end US aid to Israel in 2028. This is a foreign policy decision that even demented Joe Biden didn’t suggest. Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East, our close partner and the only bulwark against the ever-encroaching totalitarian Iranian regime. Buffoonish barely describes the extent of Ramaswamy’s reckless naivety on this matter. Perhaps someone on his staff should remind him that Trump succeeded in moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in a clear effort to strengthen our ties with our critical ally.
Ramaswamy is an interloper among stern men and women. He may be blunt about Trump, but he’s only playing the angle. Let’s hope that soon Vivek will slip away and join the long line of political oddities stored on the dusty shelf of historical curiosities.
