The Kamala Conundrum
Biden's Age Shifts Focus on the V.P., and well...
When word got out that Joe Biden had selected California Senator Kamala Harris as his Vice Presidential pick, I was a little disappointed, not for the reasons you might think:
Harris was a rising star in the party, and despite the prestige of the position, Vice Presidents typically look bad.
As good as she can be within government, she is not great at retail politics. She often comes across as condescending and inauthentic.
They get relegated to the sidelines or events the President doesn’t want to touch. There’s more likelihood of attention from a faux pas than from a huge achievement. They may advise the President, like Biden did for Obama, but the President ultimately takes all of the credit.
Also, there’s usually no real legislative accomplishments, except for splitting ties in the Senate, which ultimately results on getting 100% of the blame when the V.P. tries to run for President someday.
I always thought she should have stayed in the Senate, stayed much more visible, garnering much more attention pushing legislation and building her base within the party before becoming V.P.. But this gets into why Presidents pick V.P.s in the first place, to round out the ticket. Let’s look at every VP chosen for a winning ticket since Reagan selected Bush.
Outsider candidate former California Governor Reagan chose DC insider Bush for intraparty political balance. Reagan was the conservative running, while Bush was the more moderate. Selecting Bush unified the entire party.
The aging pragmatist George H.W. Bush chose youthful social conservative, Senator Dan Quayle. Again, intraparty political balance. The moral majority was on the rise in the GOP, and Bush needed to shore up their support.
Young southern Governor, accused of smoking pot, philandering and all around being a hippie, Bill Clinton chose a more moderate southern straight arrow Senator Al Gore. The choice gave the party a youth injection, put two southern states the GOP needed in play and unified the party.
Frank, unintelligent, off the cuff nepo baby Governor from Texas, George W. Bush selected ultimate DC insider, pulled himself up from a nobody, calculating, Machiavellian, DC power consigliere Dick Cheney for the ticket. Cheney was originally hired by Bush to FIND a VP pick and like all good political opportunists, took advantage of it.
Young, new to D.C. and lacking foreign policy experience, Barack Obama chose the head of the Senate Foeign Relations Committee and longtime D.C. Senator Joe Biden to be V.P..
Party outsider and anxiety inducing manic Donald Trump selected the deliberative former Governor and Indiana Representative Mike Pence as V.P..
So in most cases, the V.P. is chosen to shore up the President’s shortcomings; either in character, ideology or electorally.
Which brings us to Kamala. Biden has always said that he selected her because his son Beau had worked with her as states attorneys general and was impressed. The more cynical reason was that amidst Black Lives Matter and MeToo protests, selecting an old white guy was going to require some demographic olive branches to unify and excite the Democratic Party, and Kamala, no matter how qualified in other ways, checked both of the boxes he needed, women and African-Americans. In most every way, she was the “anti-Biden” candidate, the yin to his yang. And the ambitious Senator from California was not going to say no to it.
“The Vice Presidency Isn’t Worth a Bucket of Warm Spit”1
So how is Vice President Harris doing? Fine. Ish. About as good as a Vice President can I guess. She does the requisite meet and greets and appearances. She gets sent to where the President wants to stay away from, like train derailments, the southern border and natural disasters. In the 2021-2 Senate, which was 50-50, she delivered on the party tiebreaks regularly.2 She stays mostly on the sidelines, cautiously not upstaging the President. All in all, she's done a decent job of it. Occassionally, she'll say something dumb or stammer, but she seems to have a good humor about it and it amounts to nothing.
So why is her appeal so low? Why do her approval ratings barely register in the 30s?
It’s because she’s the Vice President. That’s why. 3
The Vice Presidency is the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.4 It's a resting place for mediocrities.5 If the Vice-President were not to be President of the Senate, he would be without employment.6 The nature of the position makes ANYONE look bad, even the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. It's a position where careers are more likely to be ruined than as a steppingstone.7
The Vice Presidency’s only prestige comes from the fact that they are next in line for the Presidency, should the President die or resign. That’s it. It’s in its potential for power that gives it any sense of esteem. And so long as that potential remains just that, the person in that position looks like, well, 2nd best if not lower than that.
And Ultimately What This is All About
So Kamala has done what every Vice President does and like every VP has watched her reputation and approval ratings suffer for it. But with Kamala there is an issue that we haven’t really had to face since Reagan, and that’s that there is a real possibility she may have to assume the Presidency due to the health and age of the person at the top of the ticket.
With George H.W. Bush, there was really no worry. He had worked as CIA director, knew Washington inside and out and was reassuring that there would be competency should Reagan unfortunately meet his demise. Harris’s lack of time and visibility on a national stage however offers no such reassurance to the public.
We can look at the context of another Presidential campaign to see how the selection of an obscure VP candidate ultimately hurt the ticket. In 2008, aging veteran John McCain plucked political neophyte Sarah Palin from Alaskan obscurity to be the VP candidate. Now, Ms. Harris is much more intelligent and competent than Palin ever was, but knowing Palin may one day be President should anything happen to McCain gave a lot of voters pause.
And this is the conundrum that Kamala Harris finds herself in. In 2024, she is as sure to be as scrutinized as Joe Biden is likely to be for President. First off, it presents a potential to upstage the top of the ticket, but so far Biden seems OK with that; his campaign announcement showcased her a lot, much more than any VP candidate in memory for this kind of spot.
However, she has to prove, again and again, she is up for the task and reassure voters there will be no problems if she’s called to be elevated to the Oval Office. She actually has to work at and improve her retail politics skill set. Yet the actual office of the Vice President works against that, or at a minimum creates a huge obstacle to ensuring it. Republicans are already angling their attacks towards her because they know people like Biden a little better, and it subtly brings up the Biden Age issue which people are concerned about. As a GOP consultat put it, “They’re going to run against a dead Biden and a live Kamala.”8 She’s a bigger, easier target for GOP knives.
Some (including Thomas Friedman) say that Joe Biden should dump Harris in favor of someone else, to which I say “who?” and it would be an admission of failure in judgment that would not look good for Biden.9 It wouldn't help his campaign any anyway.
There is one advantage to this and that is that it’s much more common on campaigns for the VP to be the person who throws the mud at the other party’s candidate. So we’re going to see Kamala go after Trump constantly. It’ll free Biden up to speak positively and stay above the fray, and also keep him off the trail a little bit more keeping his visible exposure less necessary. It’s going to be a muddy, dirty campaign in 2024.
Biden-Harris 2024 is going to feel more like a test run for Kamala Harris 2028 than any VP ticket in history. It’s going to be exceptionally unfair in that respect, but it’s necessary given the age and health of the top of the ticket. For her sake, I hope she succeeds.
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
We’ve had 46 total Presidents. Of those 46, a total of 9 obtained the position following death or resignation.
The eight to elevate to the Presidency after the President’s death are John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Gerald Ford was elevated after Nixon’s resignation following Watergate.10
Upon William Henry Harrison’s death, John Tyler was routinely called “His Accidency” and there was a debate about whether he should be referred to as “Acting President” or just “President.” It was eventually generally accepted that the VP assumes the powers of the President and should called as such, but this was not formalized until the 25th Amendment was passed.
PurpleAmerica Cultural Criticism Corner
It’s not often Vice Presidents receive a whole lot of attention. Its rare for them to have films and shows made after them, and yet…
George W. Bush granted so much policy authority in such critical areas to Dick Cheney that it was often joked he was the President. A great movie about it is the 2016 movie “Vice” starring Christian Bale as Cheney.
Another good story about Vice Presidents is Rachel Maddow’s gripping piece “Bagman” about Nixon’s disgraced VP Spiro Agnew. The first episode can be seen here.
Footnotes and Parting Thoughts
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Former Vice President, John Nance Garner
When she runs for President some day, every single one of those votes are going to be places squarely at her feet, as she made the deciding vote each time.
I’d also make the case that she doesn’t have a political base outside of the much more liberal California, but for our purposes, just the fact she’s VP is enough.
John Adams, our first Vice President.
Presidential historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Founding father, Roger Sherman.
“It’s not a steppingstone to anything but oblivion.”- Teddy Roosevelt.
This was actually parroted by GOP candidate Nikki Haley as well.
On another note entirely, all it would do is ensure another promising political career ends up in the wasteland of the Vice Presidency.
He remains the only person to be President who never appeared on a national ticket to that point. Agnew was Nixon’s V.P. but had to resign amid corruption allegations. Ford was nominated and confirmed and then shortly after that, Watergate erupted.