Exclusive | Vivek Ramaswamy tells ‘Pod Force One’ US may have been ‘in decline’ for past 50 years: ‘It doesn’t have to stay that way’

WASHINGTON — Ohio gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy suggested on The Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast, out Wednesday, that the US “may have been a nation in decline for the last half-decade.”

“We may have been a nation in decline for the last half-decade. We may have been a nation in decline for much of even the last half-century. But it doesn’t have to stay that way,” Ramaswamy told The Post’s Miranda Devine.

“I believe we can still be a nation in our ascent, but we have to confront what the actual failures are,” he added. “One of those deepest failures, is the failure in our education system.”

Ramaswamy, 40, made the theme of American decline one of the themes of his 2024 run for the White House.

On Dec. 26, 2024, Ramaswamy ignited a MAGA-world firestorm for posting a blunt critique on X of how “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence.”

“It is a moral imperative to make sure that our kids and their generation are equipped to be at the forefront of a modern economy,” the aspiring governor said. “And are we prioritizing that to the extent that we should right now as a country? No, we’re not.”

Ramaswamy said that he’s eager to test his ideas on how to boost the education system in Ohio should he become the Buckeye State’s 71st governor in 2027.

While the Republican said he favors school choice, Ramaswamy told Devine he wants to elevate the “standards of performance of public schools themselves.”

“There’s a lot of common-sense reforms that we should be able to adopt in our public schools that allow them to compete with the best of those alternatives,” he said.

One idea involves making standards tougher for teachers, particularly when it comes to math instruction.

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“Our licensing requirements to be a teacher are over-expensive,” Ramaswamy argued. “They keep out good people. On the other hand, they’re under-inclusive, because for all the licensing standards we have, they don’t even license them for competency in math to be a math teacher.”

The Cincinnati native also said he wanted to reverse Ohio’s industrial decay over recent decades — which he blamed in part on issues with education.

“A lot of Ohio sectors … were at the leading edge of the first industrial revolution,” he said. “Ohio was once at the forefront, [but] began to fall behind areas like Silicon Valley that seized the new forefront.”

“We need to revitalize it and make the Ohio River Valley lead for the next 10 [years] and that means not just the sectors of the past. We build on those foundations, but also embrace the sectors of the future.”

Ramaswamy is currently leading the race for the GOP nomination to become governor of the Buckeye State, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.