Ceiling for Harris should go higher than Biden’s VP
In selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate, Joe Biden has made the smartest decision of his campaign. His choice is practical, historic, eminently sensible and uniquely consequential, striking a balance between winning and governing.
You might also say it was predictable. Harris has been the front-runner since Biden effectively won the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in March with the support of Black Americans. She is a person of mixed race with strong credentials; once Biden shrewdly committed himself to choosing a woman, Harris was the favourite.
It may be that Biden feels closer to Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota (who withdrew from contention) or to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who intrigued him enough to invite her to Delaware for a chat. He may have felt that Klobuchar has more legislative experience and Whitmer has more executive experience than Harris. He may have had more “chemistry” with them.
If so, applaud his generosity and his judgment. Like Barack Obama, who reportedly said his heart wanted Tim Kaine as his vice-president but his head wanted Joe Biden, Biden did the wise thing. Reason demanded that his running mate be the senator from California. Here’s why:
The ticket marries white and black, youth (she’s 55) and age (he’s 77), man and woman. It brings together a small state and a big state, on both coasts. It is past and future.
Harris has served at all levels of government. She has spent three and half years in the U.S. Senate. As district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of a state more populous than Canada, she knows about administering justice, addressing minorities, managing the system.
In other words, she isn’t new to running things. This matters for a president who may well task her with overseeing his ambitious social and economic agenda.
In the Senate, she is a fierce combatant. In recent months, she has been particularly strong on issues of policing and a champion of the marginalized who are reeling from COVID-19.
It is hard to find a politician with experience, intellect and temperament, but Harris has all of them. She has been in politics some 16 years. She is smart and creative. She is engaging, charming and — rare in public life — she is funny. She is said to make a tasty spaghetti Bolognese, though it’s uncertain Biden’s search committee verified that critical credential.
Harris’ presidential campaign, let us remember, failed. She launched to a crowd of 22,000 in Oakland but faltered 11 months later. We can ask why, and hope she has learned lessons of humility, organization and judgment. If she ran out of money then, Biden hopes she can tap donors in California now — and turn out the Black vote, big time, which is vital to the Democrats.
Her presidential candidacy is an advantage. It means she has already faced media scrutiny. As the superb Peter Beinart writes in The Atlantic, her public record is defensible, even laudable, given her choices as an elected Black woman.
Progressives say she is too conservative and conservatives say she is too liberal. Within moments of the announcement, Donald Trump was casting Harris as the emblem of the “radical left.” Of course.
Now he’s the one in trouble. Facing Harris, he has to wonder today whether to replace Mike Pence, his reliable lawn ornament, who, like Thomas Dewey, increasingly looks like the little man on the wedding cake.
Poor Pence. If he isn’t unseated on the ticket by Nikki Haley, he gets to face Citizen Harris in debate. She will eviscerate him.
But Trump is right about one thing. Choosing Harris as his running mate matters more than at any time in the history of the republic. This is not just because Harris would become the first Black and Asian vice-president.
It is because Biden would be 78 on taking office in January. The job is taxing, and he is declining. It suggests that he will be the first president since the embattled Lyndon Johnson in 1968 not to seek re-election.
On Tuesday, Joe Biden made Kamala Harris his vice-president. He also made her something unprecedented: the first woman who will become president of the United States.