Reflecting On Kamala Harris

          There were hints of history-making in the air on January 21, 2021, when Kamala Harris, sporting a purple dress suit paying homage to both women’s suffrage and bipartisanship, was sworn in as the 49th Vice President of the United States. 

          That moment contained many “firsts”: Harris became the first female, black, and South Asian American to be elected as Vice President, both embodying progress, and, for her supporters, carrying high expectations for how she would perform in the job.  

          During her bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2020, while proving to be a skilled debater, Harris failed to make meaningful progress in the primaries. Welcome news followed for her supporters when Harris was announced as Joe Biden’s running mate, and upon joining the ticket, Harris certainly did not let the opportunity go to waste. She effortlessly swept aside then-VP Mike Pence in a televised debate and played a key role in Biden’s victory due to her debating and policy-making talents. On that chilly January morning, Harris’ reputation trended tall.

          Yet fast forward almost three years later, and Harris remains a shell of her former self’s assertiveness and initiative, and according to some polls, is one of the most unpopular Vice Presidents in U.S. history. Seemingly from the moment she took office, she faced increasing criticism from all sides of the political spectrum for her lack of accomplishments, and it is unclear at what point that crescendo of criticism will peak and begin to wane.  While the satirical publication The Onion is not a conventional source, a scan of its headlines nonetheless capture the perception of irrelevance she has achieved, with headlines ranging from “Kamala Harris Assures Public No One Has Given Her Single Classified Document” to “White House Urges Kamala Harris to Sit At Computer All Day In Case Emails Come Through” to “Kamala Harris Freezes After Seeing Vice President Position Posted on White House Careers Page.” While these are obviously parodies of her performance rather than actual news, as the three-year anniversary of her inauguration draws nearer, they highlight the question: What went wrong? 

          Tragically or ironically, it took mere weeks for her reputation to unravel. The seeds of Harris’ decline were planted in late March of 2021, when her first major assignment was to manage the flow of migrants traveling to the border from Southern and Central America. This had become an acute political crisis, with the Democratic Party criticizing many of the Trump Administration’s policies, in particular, separating families and confining children.
 

          Harris’ statement, “Do not come,” to the increasingly desperate migrants, many of whom were fleeing violence and economic destitution in their home countries, disappointed the progressive wing of her own party, who believed her stance violated U.S. immigration laws that grant the right to apply for asylum. Harris’ words were even viewed as hypocritical due to her own background as the daughter of immigrants. However, it was not just her words that drew criticism from Democrats: her lack of concrete action—including her failure to spend any time in any of the impacted border regions—was pointed out by both center-leaning Democrats and the entire Republican Party. Her ineffectiveness was dramatically exposed in an interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt, when Harris was asked if she had any plans to visit the border.

“This whole thing about the border, we’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border,” was her frustrated response. However, humiliation was only on Harris’ end, when Holt shot back.

          “You haven’t been to the border,” was his reminder to the flustered Vice President. 

          The interview (obviously) was a disaster and damaged Harris’ reputation. But ironically, it was likely her humiliating exchange with Holt that finally forced Harris to visit the border in late June. In other words, it essentially took three months and an embarrassing interview for her to finally take responsibility for the most basic tasks of government. While this could have been a moment of self-reflection to improve her performance, the interview moved the needle in the wrong direction, as White House officials–including members of her own staff–observed that Harris went into a virtual “bunker” for about a year, choosing to dodge interviews. According to her aides, Harris’ goal was to avoid making mistakes, and avoid letting President Biden down by extension. However, in retrospect, this only damaged her public appeal even further, as critics labeled her as a coward, and the ridicule regarding her irrelevance in the Biden Administration only grew louder.  

          In the time since the border dilemma, Harris has unfortunately failed to find her niche in the Biden Administration: She is yet to accomplish anything meaningful while in office. However, in total fairness, identity, both regarding the office and its Vice Presidents, has been an issue that has plagued American Vice Presidents since the nation’s founding. In fact, the first person to hold the office, John Adams, was notorious for his criticism of his own position. In a letter to his wife, he further illustrated his hatred of his position, and described the role of Vice President as being “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” 

          Adams’ words, although dramatic, do in fact explain the frustration felt by so many Vice Presidents over the course of U.S. history. From John Garner, who summed up his purpose as FDR’s second in command as being “a spare tire of the government” to Thomas Marshall, who claimed to have encouraged White House tourists to throw peanuts at him in an attempt to draw attention, the situation of U.S. Vice Presidents suffering from feelings of uselessness is an issue as old as the United States itself.

Yet what distinguishes Harris from her predecessors and makes her overall failure evident is her—in some instances—unprecedented unpopularity. In November 2021, her approval rating plummeted to a startling 28 percent, a historic low for any modern U.S. Vice President. Disapproval among American voters stuck, as a poll conducted by NBC News last June found her net approval rating to be -17, the lowest number ever recorded by the poll. As Harris’ disapproval skyrockets, Republicans, as well as some Democrats, are claiming that Harris may indeed be the least popular Vice President in U.S. history. Although that may be a stretch, simply because executive branch approval ratings have only existed since about 1937, it is without a doubt that Kamala Harris’s approval statistics are concerning, especially with 2024 right around the corner. 

          Last November, The Economist predicted that 2024 will be “the biggest election year in history,” with the U.S. Presidential Election certainly its crown jewel. 2024 is already on course to be a Biden-Trump rematch: while Trump faces “competition” in Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis in the upcoming primaries, polling numbers suggest the only true roadblock between Trump and the Republican nomination are his own legal charges. On October 31, 2024, Halloween will coincide with the climax of the upcoming election campaign, and, to quote The Onion once again, Harris will be seeking to avoid a repeat of a miserable 2023 when she was parodied as “Kamala Harris Wears Sad Little Bat Headband Alone At Desk.” In Harris’ attempt to avoid causing trouble for the Biden Administration, she instead failed to accomplish anything meaningful, and as of the present, is in danger of falling short of achieving her most prominent responsibility as Vice President—to help President Biden attain reelection. While Harris proved to be an asset in 2020, reversing her decline is necessary to avoid her worst fear–becoming a liability–in 2024.