What’s Kamala Done?

​ As the 2024 election nears, it’s shaping up to be a repeat contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. For his part, Trump is currently occupied defending himself against the four criminal proceedings that have been instituted against him and to use those legal proceedings to motivate his loyal supporters and to solicit them for donations. At the same time, his allies in the Congress and the media have been attacking President Biden on three fronts: his handling of the economy, his association with the legal problems faced by his son, Hunter, and his decision to continue with Kamala Harris as his running mate. The first two of these avenues of attack are turning out to be dead ends. The economy is booming with no signs of waning and the case against Hunter Biden is on life-support as the prosecuting attorney has already telegraphed his inclination to resolve it with no jail time for the younger Biden and without any connection with President Biden. As a result, President Biden’s greatest vulnerability has become his advanced years and the significant likelihood that his election may be perceived as a de facto election of his Vice President, Kamala Harris.

​​  This brings to mind the problem faced by President Eisenhower when he declared his intention to run for re-election in 1956. Although Eisenhower was only 66 at the time, he had suffered a heart attack raising the question as to whether he could serve out another term. This also made Americans wonder whether his vice president, Richard Nixon, would be able to lead the nation. When asked what Richard Nixon had done while serving as his vice president, Eisenhower thought for a few moments and then responded that he would need a few days to come up with an answer. This response obviously did not inspire confidence and may have contributed to Nixon’s loss to Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election.

  This also helps to explain why Trump’s political and media allies have embarked on a campaign to discredit Vice President Harris, asserting that she is ill-prepared to assume the role of the president and that she has accomplished little or nothing while currently serving as the nation’s vice president. This has been such a successful effort that many Democrats have even begun to question whether Vice President Harris is an asset or a liability in Biden’s quest to be re-elected.

  The criticism that Vice President Harris is not capable of serving as the nation’s president is one that can be made against any and all presidential candidates as the job covers a multitude of disciplines and presidential decisions have enormous ramifications. For example, Trump’s mishandling of the Covid pandemic is reported to have caused the unnecessary deaths of 400,000 Americans which is almost as many Americans who died in World War II (see, “Understanding Trump’s Voter Appeal”). Accordingly, the most important characteristics of a successful president may be an organized mind and a willingness to accept the advice of those who have actual expertise in dealing with each issue presented to him/her.

  In many respects, Vice President Harris has been an easy target for criticism because she is perceived as an African-American and her selection as Biden’s running mate has the appearance of a choice made on the basis of “affirmative action.” In reality, however, she is both bright and accomplished and will have had the benefit of having been involved for at least four years at the highest level of the Biden administration. Born in the U.S., she comes from a highly-educated family as her mother, a now-deceased native of India, had a PhD in biology and her father, a native of Jamaica, has a PhD in economics and is a renowned professor at Stanford University. The Vice President, a graduate of Howard University and the University of California’s Hastings School of Law, also has a laudable academic record.

  She has also had a full career of governmental service having begun as a Deputy District Attorney of Alameda County from which she moved to the office of the San Francisco District Attorney where she worked her way up to become the District Attorney. After that, she became California’s Attorney General before being elected to the U.S. Senate where she has served on four prestigious committees (the Budget Committee, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Judiciary Committee). Along the way, she also served as a member of the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission.

  The very limited role of the vice president envisioned in the Constitution makes it difficult for any vice president to be perceived as being ready to administer the federal government. Specifically, the U.S. Constitution prescribes only two duties for the vice president; namely, to preside over the Senate and to cast a vote to break tie-votes (Article I, Section 3) and to assume the duties of the president in the event the president is removed from office, dies, resigns or becomes unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office (Article II, Section 1).

Throughout the nation’s history the primary role of the vice president has been to “balance the ticket”; i.e. to attract voters for whom the presidential candidate has little appeal. It has only been a relatively recent phenomenon that the nation’s vice presidents have actually been called upon to venture beyond these two Constitutionally prescribed duties. Even the highly accomplished and experienced Lyndon Johnson was left to sit idly on the sidelines by President Kennedy. Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter’s vice president was perhaps the nation’s first vice president to be assigned an important role in the president’s administration.

  There’s little question that President Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris to be his running mate was made largely on the basis of her appeal to women and African-American voters. Shortly after it had become apparent that he would be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, he announced that his running mate would be a woman, thus eliminating more than half of his available choices. Moreover, his very march to obtain the Democratic nomination was secured by the support he had received from African-American voters, which made it equally likely that his selection of running mate would be an African-American. While Vice President Harris was bright and had substantial governmental experience, her perception as an “affirmative action” selection made her a soft target for the Republican propaganda machine.

  Harris’ vulnerability to an organized campaign of disparagement was enhanced by the fact that President Biden would be an octogenarian if and when he were elected to a second term. No prior president has ever been that old when elected. Indeed, Biden’s advanced age elevated Vice President Harris’ perceived shortcomings to be his biggest obstacle to re-election. This can be seen in the seemingly tied favorability ratings of Biden and Harris notwithstanding the fact that Biden is having a remarkably successful presidency. According to Harold Maass, writing in The Week.com, “Voters hold her in roughly equal estimation to Biden; Her approval number (about 40%) is slightly lower than the president’s, but her disapproval number (about 52%) is as well.”

This brings us to the question many of my friends and acquaintances regularly pose to me, namely, “What has Vice President Harris done?” Let’s start with her Constitutional duties. She briefly assumed the duties and responsibilities of the president on November 19, 2021 while President Biden underwent a colonoscopy. While no presidential action was taken in the roughly one hour that President Biden was unconscious, she officially became the first woman to ever function in the capacity of our nation’s president. Still, it’s not surprising that this history-making event may have escaped your attention.

  Although she has not received much recognition for performing her other Constitutional duty of casting tie-breaking votes in the U.S. Senate, she has been very active in this regard. In her two and a half years as vice president she has cast a total of 33 decisive votes in the Senate which ties her for first place with John C. Calhoun, the vice  president who served under both Presidents John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson and who cast an equal number of such votes during his eight years in office. Among her  critical votes were the deciding votes for the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan which helped support  the nation’s economy during the Covid pandemic and the $500 billion Inflation Reduction Act which is currently funding our nation’s efforts to arrest climate change and a host of other programs while reducing the nation’s fiscal deficit by an estimated $300 billion over the next ten years. Because she was not the one who signed these legislative achievements into law, it’s not surprising that her critical function in the passage of these two landmark pieces of legislation may have also gone unnoticed.

  She also played an important role in the passage of the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. This was the nation’s first major infrastructure improvement legislation enacted since President Eisenhower had pressed Congress to create the Interstate Highway System. White House officials have reported that in connection with the passage of this bill Vice President Harris had “engaged with lawmakers at least 150 times through calls, meetings and trips with members of Congress.” As such her role in the passage of this important piece of legislation is clearly worthy of recognition.

  For the most part, those vice presidents who have played an active role in the administration of the federal government are relatively few in number. To be sure, Vice Presidents Mondale, Cheney and Biden had significant roles in their respective administrations largely because they each had a much greater wealth of federal governmental experience than the presidents under whom they served. Serving under a president with substantial governmental experience, like Joe Biden, makes Vice President Harris far less likely to be perceived as having played a major role. Still she has been both busy and productive even though most of her efforts have not been the focus of public attention. To some extent that’s also because the nation’s attention, while not distracted by the antics of Donald Trump, has largely been focused on the Covid pandemic, the economic gyrations and the War in Ukraine.

  The only high profile problem that has been delegated to her has been the influx of asylum seekers on our southern border. In large measure she became the recipient of this task for the simple reasons that its solution is well beyond the powers of the federal government to resolve and President Biden chose to distant himself from it. Stated simply, the current invasion of asylum seekers is the product of three forces. First, climate change has disrupted the economies of the Central American countries causing their inhabitants to seek residency in places where they can rebuild their lives and create a more promising future for their offspring. Second, the governments of these countries are corrupt and/or helpless to control crime and provide a safe environment in which their citizens can live. Third, the U.S. is a victim of its own success in that it has established a reputation for being “the home of the free and the brave” where its citizens have upward mobility and can live peaceful and productive lives.

There is very little an American president, much less a vice president, can do to arrest these forces. President Trump tried to discourage the influx of immigrants by treating them in an inhumane fashion, a strategy which had little, if any, noticeable effect other than to besmirch our nation’s reputation. He also sought to block their entry into our country by erecting a wall and increasing efforts to patrol our border. This did not deter any asylum seekers from either fighting their way to our border or from crossing it.

  Vice President Harris has tried to address the root causes of the problem by working with the governments of the countries whose citizens are seeking to immigrate to the U.S. In this connection, she has met with the leaders of the three Central American countries from which most of the asylum-seekers have come and she was successful in persuading Attorney General Garland to create a task force within the DOJ to address corruption and human trafficking in those countries. She has also been able to raise $4.2 billion in aid for these countries in an effort to make living conditions in them more habitable. Even this approach has been less than effective as the magnitude of the problem is much greater than the resources our country is willing to provide. Moreover, the monies the U.S. has provided have not been used effectively owing to the corruption in the recipient governments.

  As vice president in the Obama administration, President Biden was assigned broad responsibilities, and he has given significant responsibilities to his own vice president. According to Jake Sullivan, the current National Security Advisor, Biden “insists that she (Vice President Harris) be in every core decision-making meeting and that she weighs in during those meetings, often providing unique perspectives.” Her principal contributions have been made in the areas of maternal health and women’s rights to control their own bodies, criminal justice reform, voting rights, environmental causes, health care and consumer financial protection, all areas in which she has had considerable prior experience. In championing these causes she has maintained a very busy schedule. According to her official White House calendar she has been averaging three events per day.

She has also played a significant role in the area of our relationships with foreign governments. Although she has not negotiated any treaties (the job of the Secretary of State), she has visited over 100 foreign countries in an effort to cement our relations with their governments. These missions, while important, rarely receive press coverage in this country leading to the false impression that the Vice President is idle most of the time. Unlike our 45th president, she has not developed the habit of making outrageous statements, making her a relatively uninteresting subject for coverage by the media.

  In essence, the attacks on Vice President Harris are no more than a diversionary tactic designed to instill doubts in the minds of voters as to whether they should re-elect President Biden. They don’t even raise a serious reason for concern. Even assuming that President Biden is unable to serve as our nation’s president following his inauguration, it would still be preferable to have our country led by an intelligent woman with considerable governmental experience rather than a twice impeached, four-times indicted, adjudicated sexual harasser and habitual liar who undermined our nation’s economy, drove six of his own companies into bankruptcy and whose principal interests are his own self-preservation and self-aggrandizement. WAKE UP AMERICANS! GET RID OF YOUR RACIAL AND MISOGYNISTIC PREJUDICES AND RECOGNIZE REALITY.