Every four years, it seems, were treated to a candidate (or six) who embodies the self-love that being president is an amateur job.

Spoiler alert: it isn’t.

Amateurish is of course not how such candidates describe themselves. No, he or she is on

outsider

the label that is catnip to voters who despise the two major political parties.

Call these contenders what you will, this year we have a record crop of them, despite each party’s field being dominated by an incumbent or quasi-incumbent: the current president, Joe Biden, and the defeated pretender, Donald Trump. With both men being such flawed favorites, both unpopular with many voters, rivals try their luck against the frontrunners.

Challenging Biden are Marianne Williamson, a self-help author and failed 2020 contender, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine activist and dynastic black sheep. Trump’s rivals include seasoned politicians, but also an amateurish lineup: Larry Elder, the conservative talk show host and defeated California gubernatorial candidate; Ryan Binkley, a preacher and businessman from Texas; Perry Johnson, an entrepreneur who promotes quality management practices yet fatally mismanaged his petition to get on the 2022 Republican primary ballot to become governor of Michigan (too many voter signatures were invalid).

Last but certainly not least among Republicans, especially when it comes to his self-esteem, 38-year-old Vivek Ramaswamy, the youngest of the bunch, is a wealthy biotechnology entrepreneur, son of Indian immigrants, and author of the right-wing bestseller Wake, Inc

Ramaswamy is the star among the amateurs. He personifies the utter rashness and hubris of a high achiever who looks in the mirror and sees a president.

The job requires an extraordinary amount of confidence, and perhaps Ramaswamy’s stubbornness explains why Republican voters have given him a bump in the polls recently. He’s recording support in high single digit percentages, even in double digits in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, apart from Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Republican aspirants languish in low single digits.

Thanks to his poll gains, Ramaswamy will take center stage with DeSantis on Wednesday night in Milwaukee, when eight rivals converge for the first Trump-less Republican debate. And Ramaswamy’s mini-boomlet is why, ahead of the debate, a pro-DeSantis

SuperPAC

super PAC somehow thought it smart to publicly post the advice to the waving governor to bring a sledgehammer to Ramaswamy.

It is certainly true that political experience does not guarantee a successful presidency. Pretty much political inexperience anyway

guaranteed

failure. Governing a nation of 330 million people and leading the free world is not for beginners.

Of the five presidents who have not previously held public office, three have served in the last century: Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Donald Trump. Hoover and Trump were defeated for re-election and are among the worst presidents ever. Eisenhower was the exception to the rule, and no wonder: he wasn’t an amateur at all. He had been the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in World War II, a job that involved navigating politics in Washington and European capitals, not to mention mobilizing armies on two continents.

Even Trump, the narcissist who proclaimed in 2016 that only I can fix it, now inadvertently admits the value of bringing political experience to the White House. He and his allies repeatedly suggest that he will be a much more effective autocrat in a second term, my word, not theirs, for he has had four years of on-the-job training. Now hey

Real

knows which levers to pull, which heads to roll, and which laws to bend or break.

Ramaswamy, running as Trump 2.0, insists he will beat the original. I believe with great conviction that I will win this election, he said in the Atlantic this week. (And one of his first acts as president, he says after every impeachment against Trump, will be to pardon his predecessor.)

The challenger looks more like Trump than he knows. Ramaswamy represents the complete amateurization of politics in the Republican Party that Trump, like Tommy Vietor, has facilitated put it on the Pod Save America podcast, he co-hosts with other Obama veterans from the White House.

Vitor brought receipts. He played a clip of Ramaswamy promoting his foreign policy campaign document.

No one has even gone into this level of detail here, Ramaswamy boasted. He added: I didn’t know much about this six months ago. But the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m the only one willing to admit that. And so I think that this depth of knowledge combined with strategic clarity will actually keep us out of war.

Think about that. Ramaswamy pits his semesters of State Department 101 lecture against the experience of a former Vice President (Mike Pence), UN Ambassador (Nikki Haley), head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and a Congressman (Asa Hutchinson), a Senator who presides over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Tim Scott) and a CIA agent (Will Hurd). Oh, and if you count Trump, a former president.

So what are his genius foreign policy ideas? Essentially withdraw from global leadership. Reduce or end aid to Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine. Allow Russia to keep the parts of Ukraine it now occupies and to cut Ukraine off from NATO. Break the alliance between China and Russia, as if it were within the power of a US president.

At home, he said, it is time for a 1776 revolution against forces such as wakeism, transgenderism, climatism and covidism. huh?

And if you want another conspirator for president, he’s your candidate. In the Atlantic interview, Ramaswamy suggested that federal agents might fly with the terrorists on 9/11.

Fortunately, Trump 2.0 has a snowball chance to become president. No sledgehammer should be needed. Sadly, we may still end up with Trump 1.0

@jackiekcalmes