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Whatever happened to Kamala Harris? ‘They have kept her away from public appearances’

Despite early promise, the US vice-president’s performance has failed to capture the imagination. Many Democrats worry that Biden simply does not have the latitude to carry her as a running mate

US Vice President Kamala Harris makes a toast during a breakfast in honor of now outgoing Taoiseach Leo Varadkar at the US vice president's residence in the US Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, on March 15th. Photograph: Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images

Keith Duggan's face
Keith Duggan
Sat Mar 23 2024 - 06:00

Nobody ever said politics is a dignified game. On an overcast Friday morning on St Patrick’s weekend Kamala Harris, the vice-president of the United States, appeared at the front door of her Washington home to greet now outgoing Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and other invited guests. They stood on the porch in the dull light for the photo opportunity that marked the first part of the pantomime of an informal breakfast.

Harris was sufficiently gracious to offer a reserved wave and a call of thanks to the media gathered on her lawn even though her frozen smile seemed to brace her for the next piece of choreography: our brief invasion of the Harris hallway for the pre-breakfast remarks, having a nosy at the artwork and the family photos on the stairs, and wondering what it must be like to be here for the four years every vice-president spends in what is a gorgeous 19th-century home that was once part of the naval conservatory buildings on the sleepy fringes of the city.

And how weird to move into the same dwelling that your arch nemesis – in this case Mike Pence – had just vacated. Do you redecorate or simply douse the place in smoking sage? Perhaps both.

Awkward as the whole charade was for everyone (why not just enjoy the breakfast in private?), the morning was a pleasant duty for Harris. The tradition of having the Irish leader over for waffles and coffee was initiated by Joe Biden, the enthusiast-in-chief of all things St Patrick.

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Harris, in the morning room, said warm things about Irish-US relations and spoke of anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass. When Varadkar took to the podium he delivered a nimble line that began as a joke but has acquired new weight since his abrupt resignation announcement this week. Alluding to the thankless, demi-lit role of the second-in-command, Varadkar empathised with Harris and reminded the gathering that he had served in both offices. “And I’m not going to lie, I know which one I prefer.”

Harris laughed, but Varadkar’s aside got to the heart of one of the intriguing subplots of the 2024 election. Her. The closer Kamala Harris edges to the Oval Office the faster her stock seems to fall. Unpopular though the current and former presidents are as candidates, with Biden and Donald Trump sharing a 40 per cent approval rating among registered voters, Harris’s latest figures show an approval rating of just 36 per cent.

Now outgoing Taoiseach Leo Varadkar with the US vice president Kamala Harris during a breakfast meeting in Washington, DC, during his visit to the US for St Patrick's Day. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire

Nikki Haley was the most strident of the Republican primary candidates in warning that a Biden presidency will ultimately mean a Harris presidency. It was a line she repeated in her furious spate of ice-storm rallies in Iowa and New Hampshire. The inference was that Biden will, for reasons to do with age, invariably fail to complete a second term. And Haley felt that articulating the mere idea of Harris as occupant of the Oval Office would be enough to strike fear into Republicans.

In fact it strikes a sharper fear into many Democrats but for different reasons. Harris’s four years in office have been broadly depicted as a disaster. Just this week, had she opened her Washington Post, she would see an opinion column bearing the headline: “For the country’s sake, vice-president Harris should step aside.” As America inches towards an election which the vast majority of the country is dreading, many Democrats privately worry that Biden simply does not have the latitude to carry Harris as a running mate and that a new face, a new voice and personality – precisely the qualities that Harris embodied four years ago – could lift a campaign that lacks effervescence.

The dismissive view of Harris is that her lightning rise was down to a happy accident of background and circumstance. She arrived as the voguish senator from California in 2017 and was quickly labelled as the Democratic rising star, with a strong track record as a prosecutor and a slender legislative portfolio that was glossed over.

Two years later she ran for president in a Democratic primary that at one stage had more than 30 candidates. It has long been forgotten that after the first televised debates (held on two separate evenings to allow for the number of candidates) Harris received favourable reviews. Her internal support doubled, from 8 per cent after the appearance, and her campaign raised $2 million in donations in the following 24 hours.

But that was the high point. In December 2019 she ended her campaign, citing lack of funding, and the choice was narrowed down to the memorable race between Biden and Bernie Sanders. When Biden was casting around for a running mate, Harris was the compelling choice: a youthful black woman of Asian descent and the prospective first female vice-president of the United States. It was a pragmatic move: one of the few tetchy moments of the primary campaign had occurred when Harris visibly rattled Biden by accusing him of opposing the “busing” system for school integration, an argument he angrily rejected.

It could be argued that the selection was vindicated by the fact that the Biden-Harris ticket won the election and seemed to banish Donald Trump. But her performance over the four years has failed to capture the imagination. A conspicuous low occurred when she gave what was quickly deemed to be a disastrous television interview to NBC’s Lester Holt in the summer of 2021, who quizzed her about the administration’s failure to visit the US-Mexico border and observe first-hand the burgeoning immigration crisis.

The criticism was fierce and scarring, prompting Harris to avoid one-on-one interviews for the next two years, which in turn led to the perception that she had disappeared or was being kept out of sight.

There are two ways of looking at the vice-presidency. The benign view is that you simply have to smile, say nothing, golf and not be Spiro Agnew. (Less than a year before Richard Nixon’s departure as president, Agnew resigned in disgrace.) But as Varadkar hinted, it can be a curiously hollow office for a public figure of ambition.

Way back in 1793, John Adams griped in a letter to his wife, Abigail, as he explained the frustrations of foreign affairs, writing that: “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived; and as I can do neither good nor evil must be born away by others and meet the common fate.”

Harris supporters would argue that in her four years she has done good that has largely gone unacknowledged. Her freedom to move beyond the confines of Washington and Capitol Hill was curtailed by her role as president of the senate, a vice-presidential duty which carries no vote unless it is the casting vote for a tied senate, as this one duly was. Since assuming office Harris has had the casting vote on 33 occasions, breaking the record set by John C Calhoun in 1832.

She is habitually hauled over the coals for her gifts as a public speaker or interviewee, when she can appear both uncomfortable and aloof. The counter- argument is that she has not been given an opportunity to shine. Managing the public profile and performances of the 81-year-old Biden is key to the Democrats success. The entire party base held its breath on the night of his State of the Union address, which required him to give a 90-minute oration in front of a crowded gallery in the House of Representatives and a hostile Republican audience waiting for the grievous slip-up or stumble that never arrived.

Since that night Harris’s role has become more visible and high profile, from her delivery at the Munich Security Council to her advocacy, through a nationwide tour, for women’s reproductive rights. One thing became clear through those rallies. Whatever about Harris’s gifts as a communicator, it is undeniable that she is, right now, a more cogent and powerful orator than either Biden, who can sometimes be impossible to hear, or Trump, who has developed an alarming tendency to drift away into incomprehensible and often shocking diatribes.

At a recent talk in Savannah, Georgia, Harris spoke with conviction and energy about the importance of women’s rights in her life. She told the audience about a schoolfriend who confided in Harris that she had been molested by her stepfather: Harris asked her mother if the friend could come and stay with them.

“And she said of course she has to come and stay with us,” Harris told the crowd. “So, the idea that someone who survives a crime of violence; a violation to their body, would then be told they don’t have the authority to decide what happens to their body next: that’s immoral. And let us all agree, one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do with her body.”

During her talk, the pro-Palestinian protesters who follow her around interrupted to make their voices heard. Harris had the poise to remain silent and impassive as the audience chanted her name and acknowledged the protesters’ right to be heard before reminding everyone that today they were here to address an important issue.

“For nearly half a century Americans relied on the freedoms protected by Roe. However, 19 months ago the highest court in our land – the court of Thurgood [Marshall] and RBG [Ruth Bader Ginsberg] – took a constitutional right that had been recognised from the people of America. From the women of America. In states across our nation extremists have proposed laws that criminalise doctors and punish women. Laws that threaten doctors and nurses with prison time, including right here in Georgia, even for life in some states. Prison for life simply for providing healthcare. Laws that in some states make no exception even for rape and incest.”

This was Kamala Harris back in the more familiar setting of the legal world, dealing with what is set to become a defining issue of the election. She was making an argument rather than engaging in the slithery political world of deal-making and backslapping. This was closer to the politician her supporters believe has been too seldom seen.

“I think there really is a lot of racism and sexism involved with it. She is extremely dynamic; when you see her speak she is so impressive. But I think that they have kept her away from too many public appearances because she’s just got this polarising unpopular standing within the public that is in my view completely unjustified,” said former California congresswoman Katie Hill, who campaigned for Harris, on the BBC podcast Americast.

Eight vice-presidents – John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson – took the oath of office through the death of the sitting president. Gerald Ford became president after Nixon resigned. The precedents are there for Harris to assume the highest office in the land.

What you notice looking back at that 2019 primary debate is how youthful Biden looked then: he was a zingy 77. The top office is a gruelling job – a fact Varadkar tactfully did not mention that morning at breakfast. If Biden wins a second term he will be 82 and facing into another relentless four years, accompanied by a woman who has endured a scalding first term in office but may emerge all the stronger for it.

Not long after Harris began as vice-president, Corey Booker, a New Jersey Democrat senator, said by way of praise that she “eats difficult for breakfast” in an interview with Christiane Amanpour.

“There’s only been two black women senators in the history of the United States of America,” he said in a rhapsodic tribute. “She did that. She was the first African-American woman statewide for the office that she held in the most populous state in the nation. I could go through her career, and she keeps doing things in worlds that people say, well how is she going to make it? She has distinguished herself continuing to be elevated by the communities in which she serves.

“I already know who she is. I’m just excited to see America discover her, to get to know her better, and really rejoice.”

Clearly, and to the disquiet of Democrats, that discovery evidently has not happened. Yet.

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