Opinion
Vivek Ramaswamy’s best shot at power is as Trump’s campaign partner
Summary
- His outlandish tactics may have led him out of the US presidential race more than racial rejection.
An absurdist scenario has played out for months in the bizarrely binary racial politics of the US, with one Indian-American identifying as “Black" in the vice-president’s office (Kamala Harris generally downplays her mother’s Tamil heritage) and another passing for “White" (Nikki Haley’s parents are Punjabi Sikhs) in her quest for the Republican party’s presidential nomination in a field of candidates that included Vivek Ramaswamy, the only undisguised Indian-American among the three, till he withdrew from the race this week. This mercurial 38-year-old entrepreneur splashed $17 million of his own money to garner only about 8,000 votes in Monday’s Iowa caucuses, a moment of truth that led him to drop out in support of Donald Trump, with the controversial ex-president hinting of a relationship: “It’s an honour to have his endorsement. He’s gonna be working with us... for a long time."
Ramaswamy rocketed to US attention with an unconventional internet-first strategy, relentless hard work and an eagerness to break Republican orthodoxy. In the first televised debate last September, he channelled former president Barack Obama—who remains anathema to Republicans—by introducing himself as another “skinny guy with a funny last name" and quickly pivoted to slam his fellow candidates: “I’m the only person on this stage who isn’t bought and paid for." Two months later, he complained, “We’ve become a party of losers. It’s a cancer in the Republican establishment," then called for the party chairperson to resign on live television, and attacked Haley as “Dick Cheney in high heels" (referring to George Bush’s vice-president from 2000 to 2009).
Such outlandish tactics would have been unacceptable in any previous era of American politics, but Trump upturned all prevailing norms in the course of his own wrecking-ball campaign of 2016. The first former president in US history to be criminally indicted—he is charged with 91 criminal offences in 4 major cases—continues to rewrite the rules of politics by ignoring debates, and dominates opinion polls despite barely ever getting off social media to tour the US. Yet, he is favoured to win against President Joe Biden if the two face each other again, which means that Haley, Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Ramaswamy are left jockeying for a chance to be his running mate.
Will it happen for an Indian-American? At this point, it seems more likely for Haley, who avoids overtly attacking Trump while keeping the Republican establishment in her corner, including mega-funders like the Koch brothers. The former South Carolina governor could also help soften Trump’s image to win over women voters (on account of whom he had lost to Biden). She has also worked to project an indeterminate “White-adjacent" ethnicity, even listing her own race as “white" in voting records, and highlighting her conversion to Methodist Christianity. As a newcomer, Ramaswamy has had hard lessons to learn in Iowa about these basic requirements to win national elections in the US. Earlier this week, a voter told his wife Apoorva that he faces resistance “because of his dark skin, and they think he’s Muslim."
Is there a glass ceiling for Indian- Americans in politics, even for those who have played to the establishment as assiduously as Ramaswamy (a high-school valedictorian and Harvard graduate who attended Yale Law School)?
I asked Vikram Patel, the Paul Farmer professor and chair of the department of global health and social medicine at Harvard, who told me: “I haven’t heard much talk about his Indian heritage being an asset, but it is notable that two of the four Republican candidates going into the Iowa caucuses were full-blooded desis. This is, of course, at odds with the political leanings of Indian-Americans at large, who are heavily Democratic in orientation." He thinks Ramaswamy’s run ended “because he is so far off the spectrum of acceptability even in a party which heavily supports Trump," adding, “I don’t think we have seen the end of the race for Indian- Americans. Let’s not forget that the US has had two Indian governors in recent years, both Republican. If anything, I think the star of Indian-Americans in politics is on the rise precisely because they are seen as a model minority who embrace the core US value of hard work as a route to the American dream."
That perception—and varying degrees of willingness to act out ‘the good immigrant’—is the crux of what Ramaswamy and Haley must navigate in a country that sees race in unhelpful binaries of “black" and “white." The system demands a kind of perverse minstrelsy from them, because they have no political future running as themselves. In this context, it was especially off-putting to watch Ramaswamy bend over backwards to please voters. He even rapped Eminem’s classic Lose Yourself at the Iowa state fair (which prompted the artist to complain). “It was embarrassing to me not only as an Indian-American, but I take it personally as a rapper," says New York-based rap pioneer Himanshu Suri, who added this pithy sign-off: “Of course, his race is an issue in this election and that party, but I’m sure his personality did him more damage. We’ve had a lot of Indian American nerds in politics before, but this is our first dork."
