By Charles C. W. Cooke
Thursday, October 10, 2024
I do not have a high opinion of Kamala Harris, and I never have. I think she’s a dishonest, vapid,
opportunistic cipher who, in any serious country, would be considered
ineligible to run a post office, let alone to manage the executive branch of
federal government. But I must confess that even I have been astonished
by how badly Harris has screwed up during Hurricane Milton. Perhaps this is
what inevitably happens when you’re accustomed to throwing any allegation you
can think up out into the ether and watching the press turn it into a scandal that
benefits you, but . . . well, really? Trying to take on the governor of
Florida during one of the worst hurricanes in recent memory? Even the
Mafia-esque longshoremen’s union declined to do that.
The incident has been excruciating to watch. Harris came
in hot, with the indignant accusation that Governor DeSantis’s refusal to
take her call was “irresponsible” and “selfish,” and, in every moment since,
she has been humiliated by the key figures on both sides of the aisle. As one
might expect, DeSantis immediately noted that, while he didn’t know that she
had called, there was, in fact, no reason for her to have done so. She’s not
relevant here, DeSantis said. She’s never been relevant here. She’s never
called before, because she has nothing to do with this. And, if she hadn’t
noticed, he was rather busy.
Who was relevant? President Biden was. But, rather
amusingly, Biden declined to save Harris from her fate. First, he sent out
a tweet confirming that he had spoken with DeSantis. Then, he refused
to criticize DeSantis, instead describing him as “cooperative” and saying
that he was “doing a great job.” And, finally, as if to drive in the shiv, he responded
to a direct question about Harris’s phone call by reiterating that he had
“talked to Governor DeSantis,” and that DeSantis had been “gracious.”
This, in turn, gave DeSantis the opportunity to repeat
over and over what he had said in the first instance: That he has worked on
hurricanes under both President Trump and President Biden and that he has never
seen anyone try to politicize one in the way that Kamala Harris has. Naturally,
President Biden didn’t explicitly agree with that. But, by being as
professional toward DeSantis as DeSantis was being toward him — and by
signaling that, on this, he was on the same team as Florida’s governor — he
didn’t have to. His silence made exactly the same case as DeSantis’s words.
Thus, courtesy of her own bad judgment, was Harris cast
as a petty nonentity throwing stones from the outside. A good candidate would
have said that the administration of which she is a part would do everything
possible to help Florida, and then moved on to the next issue. But she
couldn’t, because she’s a fool, and she now looks as ridiculous as can be.
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