The presidential race is on! And right now the official pack of contenders consists of ... Ted Cruz.

Don’t panic. There will be others. Really, April is going to bring a veritable shower. But, right now, unless you count all the people who register to run for president on the Unknown ticket, and the anesthesiologist in Cleveland who declared his candidacy but forgot to tell his wife, Cruz is the only genuine, more-or-less serious, on-the-record candidate we’ve got. Attention must be paid.

Cruz, a freshman senator from Texas, is 44 with about two years of experience in elective office. (Barack Obama’s success seems to have given hope to the wrong people.) He announced his candidacy in a big speech to the students at Liberty University, a conservative evangelical school in Virginia.

It was a great setting — an auditorium full of fresh faces, all of them eager to support Ted Cruz and avoid a $10 fine the university levied for nonattendance.

The announcement was long on biography: Cruz tells his family story a lot, stressing the terrible obstacles overcome on the road to American success. As a public service, we are going to check to see whether you’ve been paying attention: