The first black, female, Asian (etceteras, etceteras, etceteras) Vice President of the United States seems to be disappointing a lot of people. Is it the office, the occupant, or a combination of both? And what does her struggle say about punch-list candidacies?
When Mr. Biden chose Senator Harris as his running mate, I wasn't in the least surprised. In fact, I'd predicted it several weeks before. Despite her rather salty reputation in California, her fast imploding presidential primary race, and next to no national campaign experience; Senator Harris punched a card as surely as those old IBM tropes in the 1970s that spit out calculated data.
This is not meant to sound cynical, or even patronizing to Mr. Biden. Ms. Harris' ascension notwithstanding, it is sometimes hard to remember that before the Vice Presidency of Richard Nixon, there was very little executive consideration about the Vice Presidency. Eisenhower, a successful general who was used to military command and control, and the concept of an executive officer, elevated the profile of the Vice President, and (to his credit) actually tried to find useful employment for an otherwise useless job. This pattern was carried forward by Carter/Mondale, Reagan/Bush, Clinton/Gore and to some extent, Obama/Biden but in fairness, that relationship more closely resembled Kennedy/Johnson among modern administrations. As for Mr. Trump and Mr. Pense, their dynamic was not unlike Bush/Cheney where the VP was more custodian than executive officer.
When Mr. Biden picked Senator Harris however, its hard to believe he was motivated by executive considerations. This is doubtful for two reasons. One: Ms. Harris had precious little executive experience and two: the presidential candidate had already foreclosed other options in his quest for broad primary appeal. In a 17 MAR 2020 piece in The Guardian entitled Joe Biden's pledge to pick a female vice-president smells like tokenism Arwa Mahdawi hit the nail on the head in her kicker where she states: "Of course I want him to choose a woman as his running mate. But his grand gesture feels more like pandering than policy." If it felt so on Saint Patrick's Day 2020 it will feel even more so come Saint Valentine's Day 2022, since in that same debate with Senator Bernie Sanders, the would-be president vowed to appoint an African American woman to the supreme court.
Ms. Mahdawi, a Londoner of presumably South Asian descent, should sympathize on some level with Ms. Harris. However, an excerpt from the same piece sums up the reality of her trans-Atlantic viewpoint. In response to the then candidate's statement that-- "There are a number of women qualified to be president tomorrow.” She observes: "While none of those eminently qualified women will be president any time soon, one lucky lady may have the privilege of playing second fiddle to a gaffe-prone white guy. To cement his position as intersectional male feminist of the year, Biden also promised to appoint an African American woman to the supreme court."
It's tempting to view this merely as cynical punditry; and perhaps it was in the spring of 2020. But now in the winter of our discontent in 2022, picking any candidate"to cement [a] position as intersectional male feminist of the year" seems irresponsible at best and downright incompetent at worst.
Of course none of this is Ms. Harris' fault. Politicians by their nature are opportunists and what politician in their right mind (and in their mid-fifties) wouldn't lunge at the chance for a national stage. Ms. Harris was offered an opening and she dashed into it. Let's consider it for what it was-- affirmative action for national office. Mr. Biden could have perhaps picked Senator Warren, but after her fall from Native Americanism, its safe to say there were no cards to punch there.
What's more amazing to me is that with all this considered, why would anyone expect "big things" from Vice President Harris? In the spirit of full disclosure, a close friend of mine worked with Ms. Harris in California several years ago, and as such, she was on my radar long before her national ascent. In those far-off anecdotal reports, the stories of her brittle nature and lack of work ethic (that we hear of so often these days by defecting staffers) were common knowledge. If common knowledge in California before she went to the Senate, how did they escape the president's vetting process?
The simple answer of course is that they didn't. The Biden campaign was no more interested in a competent Vice President than they were in creating a national consensus; they were too dominated by the left-wing of their party and to be frank, Ms. Harris was pretty far to the left. Remarkably though, even though she was considered one of (if not the most) liberal member(s) of the Senate during her tenure, some on the left still felt she was too moderate.
As we pointed out on 29 SEP 2020 in The Politics of Magical Thinking even this was ultimately beside the point. The Biden/Harris ticket was floated into the American mainstream on a platform of inaccessible puffery that, even if they had achieved an electoral mandate, they would have been hard-pressed to enact let alone keep past the end of their term(s).
Whatever frustration the Left and the Democrats feel toward this administration, it was all easily foreseeable (as we did on 14 NOV 2020 in Nowhere to Run to; Nowhere to Hide: Why Mr. Biden may regret his Faustian presidency ). As the limitations of a federal response to anything in a federated republic makes abundantly clear, any platform built on sweeping change is a shaky platform to stand on. Mr. Biden, once aiming for being a "Roosevelt" is most likely heading for being a Taft.
The bigger question at hand for the Democrats however, is what to do about Kamala Harris now? Whatever alternate universe saw her as a viable heir to Joe Biden must now fully admit they were in a fog. Despite the rhetoric that these disparages are caused by sexism, racism or "Asia-phobia"the simple fact of the matter is this-- Ms. Harris is not a likeable candidate. Her primary performance in 2020 should have been clue enough, but now that the U.S. public has seen her up close, the view is even more disheartening.
It's tempting to blame this unpopularity on the president and "portfolio" as if Mr. Biden were a Prime Minister (a reoccurring misconception of the American Left) rather than a president. Whatever the president "delegates" to anyone, its still the president's responsibility (See Truman: "The Buck Stops Here!"). Calling the Vice President to account for a presidential matter is half-hardheartedly disingenuous at best. But that still doesn't alleviate the fact that Ms. Harris is her own worse enemy in such matters. Take the so called "border portfolio" as an example. Had Ms. Harris gone to the border states, made a public attempt at collaboration with the border state governors, and then decried the partisanship and lack of cooperation therein-- she would have at least placated her base, seemed engaged (if not principled) and not appeared as a woefully unprepared rube for any future foray into foreign affairs. Imagine how a future presidential debate might play out when the moderator asks"what you would do about the border Madame Vice President?" Any opponent would make pate out of her response whatever it might be.
So if not to the White House where? When the Republican Party was split and had a badly defeated one term president (Taft) they sent him off to the Supreme Court. In fact, the Supreme Court has often been the preferred parking place of problematic (and unsuccessful) former national politicians. A good example being Earl Warren who needed to be removed for the Eisenhower/Nixon juggernaut, and was promised the next opening on the Supreme Court as a consolation prize.
With this history in mind (and there are many, many other examples) combined with the president's 17 MAR 2020 pledge to appoint an African American woman to the supreme court, it's not surprising that the speculation of another Harris ascension is on the grapevines-- this one being to the Supreme Court. Pundits on the Left say this is merely "right wing gossip mongering," but I'm not so sure about that. When Vice President Harris was chosen to run on the Biden/Harris ticket, it was a far different world. Popular punditry predicted a "blue wave" would sweep them into office with a huge congressional mandate. What they got was little better than a squeaker, a razor-thin majority in the House, and a dead-even split in the Senate-- which has only become more tenuous as moderates have rebelled against additional social and stimulus spending when we're sitting on $30,000,000,000,000 in debt. That's Thirty Trillion Dollars in Debt Folks.
Whatever loyalty the party feels towards its endless "glass ceilings"perhaps its time to look for a bit of pragmatism. Personally, I only care about competence in office not sex, race, or ethnicity (and for the benefit of our sitting Transportation Secretary, sexual orientation). None of these things matter one iota in the effective execution of government. What does matter is the ability to get something done and the credibility that you can do it. Before she ran for Vice President, the "ability to get something done" portion of the program was questionable, and now that she's been in office for more than a year, the "credibility that you can do it" has been incrementally foreclosed upon by consistently bad performance.
If I were Vice President Harris I'm not sure what I would do. Long ago I suggested that she use her role as President of the Senate to try to improve State/Federal relations that are so woefully out of wack. This would be an area where she as a former state Attorney General and a former United States Senator might actually make a mark. But to be frank, Ms. Harris has never struck me as a particularly creative politician. Her rapid rise is more indicative of two generations of quota filling mentality in schools and workplaces than anything to do with exceptionalism. Does that I mean I think she is somehow inferior to her high office? Yes. I think there are probably dozens (if not scores) of people who might have been better suited to fill her office, and that goes for any future presidential candidates as well. As I have often written, the Democrats need to cultivate strong governors to run for president instead of senators, because to be blunt, senators make terrible presidents. They might also revisit the Clinton/Gore and Obama/Biden years to recall the value of moderation and incrementalism.
If Ms. Harris does go to the Supreme Court, it might be her best career move. It might also be a viable "Hail Mary" for a gasping administration. How (and with whom) the President, House, and Senate filled the position would be very intriguing, and would also give old Joe Biden one more shot of building that consensus he ran on. By sending his hand-picked partner on her way up the Mall, he could turn to finding a centrist that would help balance his party, and to be candid, give the nation a little comfort in the shadow of a septuagenarian chief executive who even on his best days twenty years ago, gave pause with his convoluted and logic-defying extemporaneous comments . But I wouldn't count on this either. Mr. Biden has also never struck me as a particularly creative politician, which is why it took him forty years to get to the White House in the first place. Nation be damned, we will probably find ourselves limping along until November with yet another missed opportunity. But If I were Ms. Harris, I would grab that lifetime lifeboat with both hands and be thankful that the fickle finger of fate put it just over the bow of my rapidly sinking ship.
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