Kamala Harris’s Biggest Challenge – The New York Times

As part of his reporting on Vice President Kamala Harris for a story in the Times Magazine, my colleague Astead Herndon had a revealing conversation with Jamal Simmons, a former Harris aide. As Simmons noted, Harris rose through California politics as a prosecutor. She was either the district attorney of San Francisco or the state attorney general for 13 straight years.

To get elected to these positions, lawyers usually do not need to lay out a broad vision of society in the way that governors or members of Congress do. Prosecutors tend to focus on specific policies, while other politicians focus on reflecting — and shaping — the zeitgeist. “Often in the White House, national leaders have to base their arguments on emotion and gut,” Simmons said, “and as a prosecutor that’s not the job.”

Harris was an effective prosecutor. As district attorney, she lifted the office’s conviction rate and wrote a book whose title popularized a phrase: “Smart on Crime.” As attorney general, she cracked down on for-profit colleges, mortgage lenders and drug cartels. After winning a U.S. Senate seat in 2016, she used her interrogation skills to confront Trump administration officials and nominees in hearings.

But Harris still struggles with what George H.W. Bush — one of her predecessors in the vice presidency — once inartfully called “the vision thing.”

She often speaks in platitudes that create grist for mocking Fox News videos. (An example: “It’s time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day.”) When Astead asked her to talk about her vision for American society, she showed little interest. “I think you have to be more specific,” Harris replied at one point, “because I’m not really into labels.”

The spit bucket

In some ways, Harris’s much-discussed political problems are simply part of a political truism: The vice presidency can be a miserable job. One of Franklin Roosevelt’s vice presidents, John Nance Garner, said it “wasn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.” Lyndon Johnson loathed the role. Other vice presidents who had otherwise had little in common with one another — including Mike Pence, Al Gore, Walter Mondale and Hubert Humphrey — have found it to be a career dead end. Joe Biden would probably have joined this list but for the chaos of the Trump presidency that made possible a resurrection.

Yet Harris is not a typical vice president. She is the first woman, Black person and Asian American person to hold the job. She serves alongside the nation’s oldest president, and he’s now running for re-election at age 80. One way or the other, she seems likely to be a prominent presidential candidate four years from now.

Her defenders often argue that the criticisms of her stem from racism and sexism. And they have a point. White male politicians don’t receive the kind of online hate that she does. And men who are known to be difficult bosses are not subject to the gossipy “mean boss” stories Harris has been.

But it can be simultaneously true that Harris faces discrimination and that she creates some of her own problems. As I read Astead’s story, I kept thinking that Harris’s biggest problem was her unwillingness to help voters understand what she believed. Her inability to do so in the 2020 presidential campaign, which she entered as a front-runner, led her to drop out even before voting began.

She spoke dismissively to Astead about “lovely speeches” and “fancy speeches,” contrasting them with her emphasis on “actually doing the work.” As Elaina Plott Calabro wrote in The Atlantic, “A consistent theme of Harris’s career has been her struggle to tell her own story — to define herself and her political vision for voters in clear, memorable terms.”

Harris has several options for doing so. She could, as most eventual presidents do, signal to swing voters that she is more moderate than her party. Harris’s history as a prosecutor, for instance, could allow her to address voters’ concerns about crime and immigration. Instead, she has distanced herself from her own record — while also failing to embrace a clearly progressive image.

Who is she, and what does she believe? Even Democrats who want to like her often aren’t sure.

Harris seems to view these questions as superficial and separate from the serious business of governing. But most voters don’t follow the minutia of politics and policy. They look for leaders who can express a set of values and priorities — sometimes, yes, through lovely speeches — that resonate with their own lives.

Harris has made it very far in politics without quite having done so. But her chances of taking the final step would significantly increase if she tried to meet voters where they were.

As Astead writes, “A year away from the election and a heartbeat away from the presidency, Harris is an avatar for the idea of representation itself, a litmus test for its political power and its inherent limits.” You can read the story here.

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