Let’s face it, the two most interesting people running for president now are Robert Kennedy Jr. and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Certainly, they’re the most fun.
I hasten to add that I don’t—not now, anyway—believe that either will be taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2025.
That burden, I suspect, will be borne by Donald J. Trump, who will then have the distinction—matched only by Grover Cleveland—of being president for two nonconsecutive terms.
A lot of smart people tell me I’m wrong about that, and perhaps I am. Time will tell.
But before time spills the beans on who the next president will be, we all should pay attention to Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Ramaswamy.
They’re serious men who have a lot to tell us.
Both are enormously charismatic and articulate.
It’s true that Mr. Kennedy’s speech disorder—he suffers from a condition called spasmodic dysphonia—makes him hard to listen to.
But his passion and sincerity triumph over that liability, even making it into a patent of authenticity.
He’s a veritable bundle of energy and a fount of fresh ideas.
The fact that neither Mr. Kennedy nor Mr. Ramaswamy, as of this writing, has a snowball’s chance in hell of clinching his party’s nomination tells us more about the inertia of both major parties than their talents as politicians and communicators.
There’s something stultifying about the atmosphere in which our politics plays out.
Only Mr. Trump escapes that straight jacket, and he does so at the cost of being a pariah to the establishment, even as he galvanizes his own large and growing base.
Indictment after indictment has been lined up to greet Mr. Trump throughout the campaign season.
Indeed, he has a good case that what we’re seeing with the bizarre barrage of indictments boils down to election interference prosecuted via the legal system.
Perhaps the most serious case relates to his handling of classified documents at his Palm Beach residence, Mar-a-Lago.
It’s possible that it'll be pushed back even further, opening up the delightful possibility that Mr. Trump could face trial after he has been elected or even after he takes office.
The presidential pardon power being plenary for federal offenses, however, that contingency would be pointless as well as hilarious.
It would be amusing should Mr. Trump’s first batch of executive orders include a pardon for himself.
I doubt it'll come to that but only because I think that the Democrats’ wholesale deployment of legal flak will never make contact with its intended target.
The fortunes of the Bidens may not be so sunny.
Even liberal media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, he said, would have to start reporting on the story.
“The Democrats impeached Donald Trump over one phone call in which he basically benignly asked Zelenskyy to check and see if there was corruption with the Ukrainian prosecutor,” Gingrich told Fox News.
“Meanwhile, you have former vice president and now-President Biden saying publicly, I told them to drop him or you lose a billion dollars. So he is using the taxpayers’ money to bludgeon the prosecutor on behalf of a company which is paying his son. This is all out in the open, and it is all public.”
At this point, it’s hard to know where it'll all end.
Were I a betting man, I would say one place it ends is with a candidate other than Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket.
As for the Republican ticket, Mr. Trump appears to have it all but sewn up.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who seems to be auditioning for the title role of a new production of “Waiting for Godot,” is nowhere to be seen.
He could be a formidable candidate.
As of this writing, however, I’m struck by two things: (1) the sudden implosion of Ron Walker’s, I mean Ron DeSantis’s campaign (Scott Walker isn’t even running this time) and (2) the vigorous and open-spirited performances of Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Ramaswamy.
Their place just off center stage is an unexpected but cheery sign of political health in a time dominated by lugubrious news, not to say outright criminality.
