Kamala Harris Finds Her Level of Incompetence

By Christine Rosen

Thursday, September 29, 2022

 

In late August, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that it had to cancel the launch of its Artemis I rocket. A spokesperson for the space agency told the Associated Press that the delay had been caused by a “cascade of problems culminating in unexplained engine trouble.”

 

Substitute “political trouble” for “engine trouble” and you would have an apt description of the vice presidency of Kamala Harris, who was at the Kennedy Space Center to witness the launch as chairwoman of the National Space Council. It was yet another missed opportunity for Harris to look competent and statesmanlike. 

 

Some of her previous, more disastrous efforts to do so include “Get Curious with Vice President Harris,” a video in which she meets with children to mark World Space Week. “Momala” (as Harris styles herself on Twitter) tries to turn on the charm, but even the hired child actors can’t feign enthusiasm for her stilted efforts to connect. It looks like a hostage video. 

 

Harris’s efforts at public speaking have been similarly torturous: At a speech in Louisiana in March, she rambled about “the significance of the passage of time,” repeating the phrase four times while failing to say anything of substance. In another speech at a climate summit, she claimed, “We will work together, to address these issues, to tackle these challenges, and to work together as we continue to work operating from the new norms, rules, and agreements that we will convene to work together on to galvanize global action.” Somehow her public performances always end up sounding like they were delivered by glitchy AI. 

 

Kamala Harris ranks among the worst vice presidents in modern memory, with historically low approval ratings. How did this happen? She was supposed to be the perfect liberal hero: a woman of color with experience as a prosecutor, a state attorney general, and a U.S. senator. Having been picked as a running mate and an energetic counterpart to the ageing Joe Biden, she was determined not to fade into the background of what early on was promoted as the “Biden-Harris administration.” 

 

But Harris’s seemingly perfect identity-politics résumé is perhaps the main reason she has proven to be unsuited to the task. Having risen to power in deep-blue California, she has rarely been seriously criticized or forced to defend herself to voters or colleagues who weren’t already on her side. As a result, she has never had to develop the charisma, persuasiveness, and eloquence of a successful politician. She was chosen as VP only after Biden had dramatically narrowed his criteria by declaring he would choose a woman of color for the position. When pressed in interviews to explain something, Harris often retreats to her identity. Asked on 60 Minutes whether she brought a socialist or progressive perspective to the Democratic ticket, a clearly annoyed Harris said: “It is the perspective of — of a woman who grew up a black child in America, who was also a prosecutor, who also has a mother who arrived here at the age of 19 from India. Who also, you know, likes hip-hop. Like, what do you wanna know?” 

 

Some politicians are criticized for being too disciplined, for never going off script and showing their true selves to the public. Harris suffers from a different authenticity problem: It’s not clear that there is anything more to her than the various images her staff and handlers have tried to craft over the years. And she has not been helped by her awkward speaking style and her nervous habit of cackling and smiling at inappropriate moments, such as when she’s asked about the conflict in Afghanistan or about helping Ukrainian refugees. 

 

Like her boss, Joe Biden, she is not averse to embellishing her history to seem to be in touch with voters. She joked, during an appearance on Charlamagne tha God’s radio show,  about having smoked weed in college while listening to Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur, even though both rap artists became famous well after Harris graduated (not to mention that, as a prosecutor, Harris was known for pushing for harsh sentencing for even minor drug offenses). 

 

She was initially adored by leftist media, which turned her “girlboss” campaign moments into memes: Kamala’s “Big Feminist Energy” when she responded to being interrupted in her debate with Mike Pence by saying “I’m speaking”; the “We did it, Joe” moment, with casual Kamala in athleisure talking to the president-elect on the phone in the moments after their victory. Her online fans even tried to brand themselves the “KHive,” which didn’t quite stick but did produce a great deal of Kamala merchandise for true believers and a moment of hype (“Politicians dread the sting of #KHive, the fervent online fans of Kamala Harris,” the Los Angeles Times reported). 

 

No amount of Internet fandom can rescue Harris from her disastrous performance as VP. Although she successfully suppressed her cackle during a recent interview with Chuck Todd on NBC, she continues to repeat clearly untrue canned statements — “The border is secure” — rather than acknowledging the crises the nation faces. Besides, the nation had plenty of opportunities to preview her political weaknesses when she ran for president in 2019, before she became Biden’s running mate. Harris was unable to raise enough money despite coming from a state with one of the richest Democratic donor bases, and she performed so poorly that she had to end her campaign before the first primary vote in Iowa. As one former Harris aide bluntly told the New York Times, “you can’t run the country if you can’t run your campaign.” Harris might secretly thrill to poll results such as one from Morning Consult in December 2021 that was summarized, “Kamala Harris Leads Hypothetical Bidenless 2024 Primary.” But if Biden does not run in 2024, she is unlikely to be anointed as his successor without facing serious challenge.

 

There are many compelling criticisms of identity politics — that it is divisive and simplistic, that it removes individual responsibility from and makes victims of the people it purports to help — but Kamala Harris’s career as VP demonstrates how it can harm even those who succeed wildly because of it. By failing to hold people accountable for their weaknesses because of the accidents of their birth, it eliminates the kind of competition that, especially in electoral politics, is crucial for developing various competencies. Kamala Harris represents many historic “firsts” in American politics, but, shielded from fierce competition and failing to improve her political skill as a result, she will end up as another reminder that merely checking identity boxes does not a leader make.