Jim Geraghty writes for National Review Online about a key fact a former U.S. secretary of state appears to understand.
[O]ne-third of self-identified Republicans didn’t know enough about Pompeo to have much of an opinion of him — even after he spent two years as President Trump’s CIA director and then another two years as Trump’s secretary of state. Credit Pompeo for recognizing the reality that he just wasn’t well-known or popular enough to make a serious bid for the presidency. Longshot candidates whine that the media, both conservative and mainstream, don’t take them seriously enough. But it’s more than fair to ask if these candidates are taking the challenge before them seriously in the first place.
If you want to win a major-party nomination for president, you must be a well-known figure. An extremely well-known figure. As Liza Mair observed, “Donald Trump entered the presidential race with 99.2 percent name recognition.”
You can rage against this rule, or you can accept it and attempt to reach that threshold, recognizing that near-universal name recognition is rarely achieved quickly; it may well require the work of a lifetime. …
… Mike Pompeo was the U.S. secretary of state for about two years, and before that, CIA director for two years. The rest of his resumé glows. …
… And yet, as of a month ago, only two-thirds of Republicans felt like they knew enough about Mike Pompeo to know how they would feel if he were the GOP presidential nominee. …
… That CNN poll didn’t ask about Vivek Ramaswamy, and I am sure he and his campaign find that fact to be a great injustice — in fact, they may argue it is a sign that CNN fears Ramaswamy and doesn’t want its poll to reveal his overwhelming popularity. But it is difficult to believe that Ramaswamy, who has been in the public eye much less than Pompeo or Haley, would generate more impressive numbers than those two former Trump cabinet officials.
