Kamala Harris: Just a Punching Bag in Biden’s Administration?
Predicting the public’s reception to Kamala Harris’s forthcoming campaign memoir, ‘107 Days’, is akin to reading palms. However, piecing together the cryptic puzzle of Joe Biden and Harris’s partnership, upon a glimpse of an early snippet from The Atlantic, paints a divisive portrait. This work investigates Biden’s puzzling decision to appoint his Vice President as the diplomatic envoy handling the ‘root causes’ of immigration from Mexico and Central America in March 2021. Tasked with untangling foreign immigration policy, a notoriously complex issue, Harris had a politically treacherous task looming ahead.
The White House attempted damage control, ensuring reporters understood the enormity of the immigration issue was not falling entirely on Harris’s shoulders. However, the media still didn’t hold back, as conservative outlets clung to their depiction of Harris as the ‘Border Czar’. After Biden’s election in November 2020, it seemed logical Harris would invest heavily in establishing rapport with Rust Belt factory workers to gain footing in swing-state demographics, seemingly a trademark of Biden’s relationships. Rather, she found herself knee-deep in the immigration quagmire.
According to ‘107 Days’, Harris believes she was somewhat set up for defeat. Carrying the weight of the migration issue, Harris remarks that rather than coming to her aid, Biden’s inner circle appeared content with allowing tarnishing narratives to circulate about her. To say this lukewarm support seemed malicious might be an overreach, yet it’s clear that Harris felt used as punching bag, rather than being given an opportunity to flourish.
Harris asserts, rather accusatorily, that she was not given the chance to successfully handle an issue. She also mentioned the incident of her strong speech about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza; despite getting approval, her eloquent delivery got her unjust criticism from the presidential West Wing aides. As if set up to not outshine, Harris argues that the core team failed to see the benefit of mutual brightness.
Harris was offered no strategy to solidify her standings among Middle America, a glaring political oversight. And while we must take Harris’s perspective with a grain of salt, it seems plausible she was indeed dealt a bad hand. This was, after all, an administration helmed by Biden, who can’t seem to shake off his historical presidential ambitions.
By placing Harris in a position where she was consistently in the hot seat regarding the immigration issues from the get-go of his administration, Biden and his team might have implied they had no plans of handing over the reins in 2024. Surely Biden was aware of Harris’s presidential ambition, but now we wonder whether he obscurely chose her as VP to keep the contenders close and balance intact.
It became a waiting game, to see if Biden would suppress his overarching ambition, an ambition that had surfaced in previous incident like when he supported the legalization of same-sex marriages ahead of Obama in 2012. Biden’s intense ambition and years of steadfast effort may have propelled him to his role, but his team seemed blindsided by the swift passage of time.
The issue of presidential succession is inevitable, particularly for an elder politician. If the Vice President isn’t an elder statesman themselves, they’re undoubtedly viewed as a potential successor, needing to be primed for potential presidency. While critics of Harris can point to numerous missteps she made, it’s only fair to recall that no politician is flawless, not even gaffe-prone Biden.
Reflecting on his treatment of his Vice President, it appears Biden made a strategic decision to hoard political power for himself instead of setting Harris up for success. When I wrote about Biden’s strategies in 2021, I suggested the absence of any incentive for him to ensure Harris’s failure; this presumption was based on the idea that he understood his legacy hinged on the successful handover to Harris.
This transition would have marked a pivotal moment; the first person of color and woman of color stepping into the presidency. In that sense, assigning intentional sabotage to Biden may be rather excessive, regardless of how implausible this may seem. Yet, now it is harder to deny that Biden was not pushing for Harris’s success, which might have been a crucial misstep in his leadership.
All this suggests a consequential ego-driven approach to his presidency, obstructing a potentially smoother flow of leadership transition. The failures of this approach reveal more about his ‘style’ than his administrative capacities. This could potentially cast a dark shadow over Biden’s legacy, one he might not have accounted for when making his political manoeuvres in the White House.
The before and after math of this series of events will unfold as a revealing narrative in Harris’s much anticipated memoir. The extent of its impact on Biden’s governance, as well as Harris’s political trajectory, will soon be brought to light. We will keep speculating for two more weeks until the details are in black and white.
While we wait, perhaps there are lessons to be learned from Biden’s strategic choices and how they have shaped his and Harris’s political trajectories. One thing is clear though; navigating the intricate dynamics of the presidential office involves familiarizing oneself with political ambition, intriguing strategies, and inevitable errors. And in this web of power and position, everyone, even the Vice President, is left to fend for themselves.