Dr. Ben Carson, the only major African-American candidate this election cycle, might have the most interesting backstory of any Republican running for president. He grew up in Detroit in a single mother household. His mother only had a third grade education and at times worked three jobs to pay the bills. Early on Carson did terribly in school, but his mother made him read two library books a week and in time he learned to love reading.
Carson went on to attend and graduate from Yale University followed by the University of Michigan’s medical school. He did his residency at John Hopkins and later became the director of pediatric neurosurgery there at the age of 33. He later became famous for leading the first successful separation of twins conjoined at the head. In the early 2000s he developed prostate cancer and helped work on his own case. At some point in there he was invited to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast, earned 50 honorary doctorate degrees, won the presidential medal of freedom and was portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr. in a television movie. Toward the end of his career, he was invited to speak at another National Prayer Breakfast, this time under President Barack Obama.
That is, more or less, when everything changed.
Carson took time out of the address, which he made with President Obama ten feet away, to advocate for conservative policies at a traditionally non-partisan event. Conservatives dubbed it a “talking truth to power” moment and some began to urge Carson to run for the presidency. In the time afterwards he has been in the national spotlight as more of a conservative political figure than an inspirational physician. He briefly had a show on FOX and has earned both admiration and condemnation for statements such as calling Obamacare “the worst thing since slavery” and saying that being gay is “absolutely a choice.”
While the media derided him, activists loved his rejection of political correctness and pushed him to run, getting representatives in all 99 of Iowa’s counties in the process. He finally announced his candidacy on May 4th in his hometown of Detroit.
In terms of health care policy — his specialty — he would like to see Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare as well as private health insurance companies replaced by the institution of government-backed health savings accounts that the government would help pay into for poor Americans. Extremely costly procedures would be covered under a government-run catastrophic care insurance system. He is also in favor of assisted suicide.
Outside of that, Carson only has relatively few important ideological breaks with the rest of the field. He is strongly in favor of a flat tax rate, he has defended some forms of gun control in large urban areas and he is in favor of civil unions for same-sex couples. For the most part, especially on foreign policy, he defaults to fairly standard Republican positions.
Going into the primaries, Carson is by no means the leader, but I think he is underrated as a candidate. Carson has been polling around 10 percent support from likely Republican primary voters in the last few weeks. His appeal as a conservative political outsider in a time where many conservative activists are fed up with even elected Republicans is an undeniable asset in the primary. With his incredible backstory, disregard for political correctness and support from the conservative base he could go very far if the cards fall just right for him.
However, his lack of political experience comes with drawbacks.
He’s never run a campaign of any sort and a presidential one generally is not the best place to learn. He has a history of inflammatory remarks which, while endearing to the farthest right of primary voters, is a tad unsettling to centrists and the corporate wing of the party. It is not inconceivable that if he surged in support he would get swamped in a cascade of attack ads to prevent him from becoming the nominee. But in the meantime he has to compete with Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz for the same set of voters, and at present both are having better showings in the polls.
Carson has his own appeal as a general election candidate, though. Since he rose from poverty to greatness he is uniquely qualified to push the GOP’s message of ending government dependency and encouraging hard work without sounding elitist or racist. When contrasted with the very wealthy Hillary Clinton he could easily exacerbate the party’s criticisms of her as an out of touch professional politician. As an accomplished neurosurgeon he would also be the most qualified member of the Republican field to denounce Obamacare in a general election. He would also have some appeal for African-American voters, a group the GOP performed abysmally with in 2012. And, for what it is worth, he was ranked by Gallup as the sixth most admired man in the world last year.