Sidelining of VP Kamala Harris is not a surprise

Everyone lately seems to have an opinion about Vice President Kamala Harris. Depending on which news source or social media site you visit, she’s either improving the United States’s global profile or embarrassing the country every time she boards Air Force 2.

During a recent goodwill trip to France, she supposedly faked a French accent while speaking to scientists at the Pasteur Institute. What she said was pedestrian and perhaps condescending, as though she were talking to children. What she said, by the way, sounded nothing like French.

But no matter. What does matter is that 10 months into the job, Harris’s approval rating is at just 28%, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll published on Nov. 7. Well, it beats nothing, I guess. More importantly, bad polls can change in a blink if you know what you’re doing.

Alas, Harris doesn’t seem to. And she isn’t getting much support from the White House. With inflation breathing down President Joe Biden’s neck and his own approval rating dipping to 38%, Harris probably is among his lesser concerns. A recent CNN report based on numerous off-the-record interviews within the executive branch seems to confirm this. The piece details an edgy relationship between Team Biden and Team Harris, which Harris’s people have dismissed as “gossip.”

Caught in the crossfire between her critics and defenders, Harris is a sympathetic character. That’s chiefly because every White House, no matter the party, witnesses a certain amount of tension between the president and vice president. But there is little question that she is becoming a problematic sidekick to a man who plucked her from a crowd after only four years in the Senate.

Everyone knows that Biden’s chief claim to fame in 2020 was being the only Democrat who could conceivably beat Trump. He became the de facto nominee when Rep. James E. Clyburn, DS.C., hand-delivered the Black (and predominantly female) primary vote in South Carolina, launching the tidal wave that swept the rest of the South and gave Biden his main chance at the Oval Office.

This meant, in effect, Black women gave Biden the nomination, and in return, he put Harris, a Black woman, on his ticket. I’m certain Biden loved the idea of Harris — it was a historic pick — even if he had his doubts about the fit. And he should have because she wasn’t, in my view, ready for the job, and I am betting he must have sensed it. Did he not care? Did he think no one would notice?

What has happened to Harris reminds me of another — but very different — female vicepresidential pick: former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, R, John McCain’s 2008 running mate. Republican influencers handpicked Palin because she wasn’t former senator Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., whom McCain wanted, and because she had it all. She was striking, popular and (at least to some) was a family-values exemplar. Just what we need in a vice president, right?

So thought a few hormonally altered GOP pundits and political operatives. Uncharacteristically, McCain, after meeting with Palin for just over an hour, surrendered to the argument that she could rally the troops with a wink and a pair of red heels. Why, Republicans could even claim a feminist coup. And they were right — for about 30 minutes at the 2008 Republican National Convention.

Things went downhill after that.

Harris, similarly, wasn’t ready for the job a heartbeat away from an elderly president. Her performance in office, especially her handling of the border crisis, has only confirmed those early judgments.

In no other recent presidency has a vice president been so illprepared for office — or because of Biden’s age, more in need of being ready.

No one knew better than Biden what the job entails and, had he been a stronger candidate himself, he’d have selected a running-mate who could best serve him and the country.

Several years ago, I wrote about Palin that men used her the way men have always used women — as bit players on a stage set for their success and her failure. I’m afraid Harris, who by most accounts has been sidelined by the president, is beginning to get the picture.