George Will says Vivek Ramaswamy is ‘just wrong’ on his view of a president’s powers

Longtime conservative commentator George Will spoke out about the 2024 presidential election Wednesday, saying many of the current candidates view the executive branch as having far more power than the Constitution grants them.

In a Constitution Day lecture at Weber State University in Ogden, Will called out entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy specifically, saying the Republican candidate — who is in third place in many national polls — is “just wrong” about his perception of what a president can and cannot do.

“He says millennials have a ‘hole in our hearts,’ and he’s going to fill it,” Will said. “I don’t want politicians to fill the holes in my heart. That’s just wrong to say that’s what politics does.”

Will was apparently referencing the 37-year-old Ramaswamy’s injunction that young Americans are “starved for purpose, meaning and identity” and have “a black hole in our hearts.”

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Will cited Article 2 of the Constitution and noted that many of the things that presidential candidates are promising go well beyond the role of the executive branch. He praised North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum for his response in the first presidential debate when asked about abortion. Burgum opposed a federal abortion ban, citing the 10th Amendment and saying such a ban was not within the realm of the federal government’s powers.

“I’m going to vote for the first candidate who is asked about something and says, ‘That is none of my business — sorry, let’s let the states worry about that,’” Will said.

Will — whose twice weekly columns have run in The Washington Post for nearly 50 years and won him the 1977 Pulitzer prize for commentary — has not publicly endorsed a presidential candidate in the 2024 cycle.

In his Washington Post columns, Will has argued that neither former president Donald Trump nor Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — the two current front-runners — will win the Republican nomination. The two candidacies are “brittle,” Will writes, opening the way for another candidate to catch steam and steal the nomination.

But Will is equally skeptical of the Democratic standard-bearers, calling on both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to depart their posts after this term. He cites their repeated verbal blunders and apparent “unfitness”: “Biden is not just past his prime; even adequacy is in his past. And this is Harris’s prime.”

Will left the Republican Party in 2016. His wife is a senior adviser to Sen. Tim Scott’s campaign.

Will told his Weber State audience that as the federal government’s “pretenses have grown, its prestige has collapsed, because there’s nothing the government thinks it can’t do.” That has caused aspiring presidents to promise more and more, while neglecting the real issues that plague most Americans — and fall squarely within the president’s realm of influence, Will said.

“Who in this country thinks that education, grades K through 12, is being done well these days?” Will asked rhetorically.

“And (Ramaswamy) wants to fill the hole in our heart? Fix first grade, for Pete’s sake.”

‘Transparency isn’t the only value in life’

In front of an audience of about 150 students and faculty members, Will discussed lessons we should derive by studying the 1787 Constitutional Convention. The first thing the delegates did, he said, was close the windows. This allowed them to discuss complex issues in private — and, as needed, to compromise and change their opinions.

“You’ve got to have breathing room for the flow and free exchange of ideas, and for people not to feel that they have to be grandstanding or putting on performative displays for a larger audience,” he said.

“If C-SPAN had been there, we’d have six countries now,” he continued.

Will lamented the “performative” displays put on by members of Congress both in Washington and on social media. He referenced an April column in which he proposed — with “49% seriousness” — a Constitutional amendment that would bar senators from running for president. This would help mitigate a growing crop of senators who are “decreasingly interested in legislating, and are increasingly preoccupied with using social media for self-promotion,” Will wrote.

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The biggest threat to American democracy

Will pointed to sinking trust in American institutions — particularly the Supreme Court — as a serious threat to our nation. He said that calls to expand the court were, in effect, efforts to change its ideological composition, which would damage its reputation.

“They’re treating it as a mini-legislature,” Will said. “This is one of the most dangerous things happening in America today.”

But the biggest threat to American democracy, Will said, “is American democracy — that is, we have discovered the contentment, the enormous benefit to ourselves, of taking from the future for our benefit.” While the U.S. used to balance budgets and build infrastructure for the future, he said, “now we’re borrowing from the future — from the unborn, unconsenting and unvoting future generations — in order to fund our current consumption of government services.”