Vice president trap snares Harris
There is little doubt that Kamala Harris’ star is fading.
There’s also little doubt that her decline has almost nothing to do with her and everything to do with the position she holds.
On paper, as the cliché goes, the U.S. vice presidency is “the second most powerful position in America.” In reality, as is true with most clichés, historians, politicians, and Washington insiders have always understood that claim to be a bunch of bunk.
The kind of criticism Harris is facing for her political evanescence is as old as our nation itself. With a few exceptions — led by Dick Cheney and Richard Nixon — vice presidents historically have been so powerless, many have joined their detractors in a form of self-mockery, both sad and hilarious.
John Adams, the first vice president as No. 2 to George Washington, said: “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”
As VP to the charismatic John F. Kennedy, LBJ regularly mocked his role, often in profanely colorful terms, and complained that he’d held much more real power as Senate majority leader.
Some of Harris’ top aides in the West Wing of the White House have displayed similar gallows humor. They’ve passed around a story in The Onion, a satirical news outlet, with the headline: “White House Urges Kamala Harris to Sit Down at Computer in Case Emails Come Through.”
Joe Biden became the first vice president to reach the Oval Office via the ballot box in 32 years with his election in November 2020. His success was partly thanks to his predecessor, Barack Obama, who had weekly private lunches with Biden, gave him important assignments, and otherwise made the former Delaware senator a key figure in his administration. Just after Donald Trump’s election but before his inauguration, Obama made Biden the first sitting VP to receive the Presidential Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Biden’s influence began at the start of Obama’s administration when he used the contacts from his long Senate career to help push through the almost $1 trillion stimulus package just a month after
Obama took office, a critical step in the country’s recovery from the financial collapse of the previous fall. Biden later was point man for Senate ratification of a major nuclear arms accord with Russia and for elimination of the military’s don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy for gay service members.
Though Biden insists that he has returned the favor with Harris, the evidence suggests otherwise. They are not known to have regular meals or other meetings together, and Harris does not yet possess the high profile her boss enjoyed.
Part of Harris’ weakness is tied to her biography. While Biden had served 36 years in the Senate before becoming vice president, Harris served only four. And Harris, the first woman and the first person of color to hold the post, has made some stumbles.
Asked in June why she hadn’t visited the U.S.-Mexican border, months after Biden put her in charge of handling the flow of migrants from Central America, Harris retorted: “And I haven’t been to Europe.” She told NBC News’ Lester Holt, “I don’t … understand … the point you’re making.”
Biden, Cheney and Nixon enjoyed unusual power as vice presidents. Cheney’s clout as No. 2 to George W. Bush in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks became so great, he became known as “Bush’s brain.” Dwight Eisenhower dispatched Nixon abroad for meetings with foreign leaders, most famously the finger-wagging, voices-rising “kitchen debate” in July 1959 with Soviet strongman Nikita Khrushchev.
Biden, Cheney and Nixon, though, were the exceptions to the rule. Most vice presidents have become the butts of late-night comedians’ jokes. Some have turned the joke on themselves, even unwittingly.
Addressing leaders of the United Negro College Fund in 1989, during his first year as George H.W. Bush’s vice president, Dan Quayle tried to pay homage to its wellknown slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
Quayle declared: “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.”