Americans of South Asian Indian descent occupy just under 1.4 per cent of the population according to US Census Bureau figures, so it’s not surprising they don’t draw much attention as a demographic in political discourse. In other words, political candidates don’t feel a need to pander in search of their money, votes or support.
Despite these small numbers – fewer than five million in a country of 332 million – Indian Americans have distinguished themselves at the highest levels of society as major achievers in academia, arts, sciences, technology, business, entertainment and economics, and many have an above-average standard of living. In politics, Kamala Harris is the first person with Indian heritage to serve as Vice President, while two others, Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley, are among the candidates chasing Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination for president.
Most American Indians achieve success without seeking a big public profile, apart from Hollywood luminaries like director M Night Shyamalan and actress Mindy Kaling. But Venki Ramakrishnan and Sundar Pichai – never heard of them, right? The first is a 2009 Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, the second CEO of Google.
With politicians it’s a different story because they need a big public image, and here Ramaswamy deserves special mention. He’s out there, way out there, by which I mean he’s aggressive, combative and unafraid to provoke as the furthest-to-the-right of all the Republicans challenging Trump.
By contrast, as the only woman in the race, Haley is more like the other contenders, going about her campaign in conventional fashion, arguing strongly for her policy positions with none of the drama and attention-seeking common to the likes of Trump or Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy has dismissed the four felony cases against Trump, insisting “there’s a difference between a bad judgement and a crime”
She’s been well-known for years as a two-term governor of South Carolina and later as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. On the spectrum of a Republican party moving steadily to the right, she is an institutionalist, comfortable working within the infrastructure of government that supports the traditional (pre-Trump) structures of American democracy. She urges pragmatism based on national consensus, from abortion rights to support for Ukraine. She dares confront her fellow contenders with a strong belief that a far-right candidate cannot win a general election.
Late-summer polling by CNN showed she’s the only Republican candidate who could defeat President Joe Biden next year, and her support is growing.
Ramaswamy, on the other hand, epitomises the kind of candidate Haley warns against. A Harvard-educated founder of a biotech company and a provocateur with no political or public service experience, he’s an anomaly in the race – not unlike Trump in 2015. He also resembles Trump in his tendency to espouse extreme positions and contradict definitive statements he’s made in books or videos.
For example, Ramaswamy now positions himself as a Trump supporter, despite the fact his book Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence (2022) excoriated the former president over his role in the Capitol siege. “It was a dark day for democracy,” writes Ramaswamy. “The loser of the last election refused to concede the race, claimed the election was stolen, raised hundreds of millions of dollars from loyal supporters, and is considering running for executive office again. I’m referring, of course, to Donald Trump.”
In an abrupt about-change, Ramaswamy now calls Trump “the best president of the 21st century”, and even echoes his rhetoric in speeches. In the first Republican debate, for example, Ramaswamy described the country living “in a dark moment,” just as Trump had talked of “American carnage” in his inauguration address. But Ramaswamy typically takes it to the next level: “We have to confront the fact that we’re in an internal sort of cold, cultural civil war,” he intones.
It’s a far cry from Ronald Reagan’s view of America as “the shining city upon a hill.” But it doesn’t stop there. Ramaswamy calls for the elimination of three quarters of the 2.25 million federal civil servants and entire cabinet agencies, including the Education Department, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Commerce Department. He would end all support for Ukraine. He calls abortion murder, and he supports initiating a six-week abortion ban at the state level. Climate change, he says, is “a hoax”.
He has even dismissed the four pending felony cases against Trump, insisting “there’s a difference between a bad judgement and a crime.” During a television interview, Ramaswamy stated: “I would go further than Trump in advancing that America first agenda in a way that brings all Americans together.” He added that if he became president he would give Trump an official pardon.
At 39, Ramaswamy is just four years beyond the qualifying age to seek the presidency, and despite recent polls that show him with single-digit support, some 40 to 60 points behind Trump, his age makes him attractive to Republican voters who like Trump’s policies but not Trump. Many Republicans who share the same enmity for “elites”, “wokes” and the college-educated masters of the US, are gravitating toward a younger party leader to keep the movement expanding. After all, at the age of 77, Trump is just a few years younger than Biden.
It could be that Ramaswamy is auditioning to become Trump’s vice president on the 2024 ticket. He’s a perfect stylistic match. If that doesn’t work, he might have a better shot at the presidency in 2028.
Ramaswamy is typical of most of Trump’s challengers, who tiptoe around him, fully aware that his huge lead in the polls means they’ll need his supporters should the field open up. Only Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, and Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor – neither of whom has a prayer of winning the nomination – have been unambiguous in their opposition to Trump. They were the only two who failed to raise their hands when a debate moderator asked who would pledge to support the party nominee, no matter who it might be.
However, that doesn’t signal any unity between Ramaswamy and Haley. In the first debate she challenged Ramaswamy’s ignorance about real politick: “You have no foreign policy experience and it shows,” she declared after he said he would allow Russia to keep its plundered regions of Ukraine and would not defend Taiwan once the US satisfies its own semiconductor needs.
The odds on either of these Indian American candidates winning the party nomination are exceptionally long, even if Trump abandons the race. But they do personify the major differences in the Republican party. One side believes America doesn’t work as it is, while the other is certain that tinkering at the edges to approach “a more perfect union”, as the preamble to the Constitution says, will suffice.
No one can predict which view will prevail throughout the primary season, which starts early next year. But it’s a tribute to the diversity of the country, and specifically to Americans of Indian descent, that two are under consideration for the Republican nomination and with quite divergent views.
Stalemate
What on earth, one might ask, do abortion rights have to do with military service?
A lot, as it happens.
For more than six months, hundreds serving in the six branches of America’s military forces have been denied promotion because of a “hold” that one member of Congress has put on what is usually a routine process. Senator Tommy Tuberville, a freshman Republican from Alabama, objects to the Pentagon’s reproductive health policies, which provide time off and travel expenses for women seeking an abortion, including those who travel to another state if abortion rights are restricted where they live.
Tuberville has effectively drawn the military into America’s ongoing culture wars
By Senate tradition, any member can delay action on issues that are typically approved by a unanimous vote. Approving military personnel for promotion is one of the most common, usually done in large numbers to save time.
By holding up the promotions, Tuberville has effectively drawn the military into America’s ongoing culture wars, an arena the Pentagon assiduously tries to avoid. Critics contend that Tuberville is risking national security and harming military families as they await to learn their new postings, a delay that affects everything from family budgets to children’s enrolment in schools. They also say it is impacting recruiting and causing senior officers who have qualified for pensions to retire sooner than scheduled, leaving important positions open.
To work around the hold, the Senate approved General Charles Q Brown Jr of the Air Force as the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military’s highest position. Senators also plan to advance two more generals. But hundreds are still in limbo.
What planet are you on?
For all the differences between Republicans and Democrats these days, one that seems to defy reason comes from a new Pew Research Center survey on climate:
Nearly 80 per cent of Democrats view climate change as a major threat to the country’s security and wellbeing. Barely one in four Republicans, 23 per cent, hold the same view.
While it might appear Republicans live on a different planet, the difference has more to do with Republican scepticism that extreme weather events are an anomaly, that wind, solar and nuclear energy can never replace fossil fuels in powering the country and that to maintain legislative power, Republicans need the campaign support that the oil and gas industries happily contribute.
Democrats, meanwhile, have made moving to green energy sources a major policy initiative, capped by federal legislation that invests record amounts in policies aimed at combatting global warming.
A dressing down
The US Senate has always been a sanctum of tradition and decorum, which includes an implicit dress code. Men wear suits. Women wear dresses or trouser suits.
But like so much else in America, rules are only respected until someone breaks them. In a recent pronouncement that caught most of the 100 senators by surprise, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said members are free to wear whatever they want.
The change was largely in deference to Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a freshman Democrat and tallest member of the senate at 6’ 8”, who routinely dresses for work in sweatshirts, shorts and trainers.
The reaction was predictable: Republicans wrote a letter of complaint to Schumer, citing their “supreme disappointment and resolute disapproval” of the change” and urging him to “reverse this misguided action.”
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine took it a step further. “I think there is a certain dignity that we should be maintaining in the Senate, and to do away with the dress code, to me, debases the institution,” she said.
With Schumer steadfast in his decision, Collins said she might appear in the senate the next day wearing a bikini.
(She didn’t.)
(Whew.)
Michael Janofsky is a writer and editor in Los Angeles. He previously spent 24 years as a correspondent for The New York Times
