Another person vastly underestimated by the pundit and pol class, lucky for us, was Vice President Kamala Harris. At this writing, it is far from clear she will be able to halt the nation’s slide into a very dark place after November 5th, but quite unexpectedly, Harris had acted with an energy, subtlety, and skill that almost seems providential. Nobody understands this more clearly than The Donald himself. Since late July, he has been tossing his red ball cap to the ground and jumping up and down on it.
Biden was not getting the job done, and Harris was widely believed to not be “up to it.” Curiously, nobody could make a compelling case as to why this was the case, and happily, it turned out that the case could not be made because this was not the case at all.
The vice presidency is a funny office. You are nothing, and you may be everything (but that is only rarely the case). It is a job that usually diminishes, and often the most formidable of people. No VP has successfully climbed directly from the VP spot to the Big Job since George HW Bush in 1988. Prior to that, Martin Van Buren was the last one, in 1836.
Often the result of shotgun marriages, ticket balancing of various kinds, Harris was regarded a formidable political talent when she challenged him for the presidential nod in 2019, famously knocking him off balance by unearthing his 1970s vintage relationship to thorny school integration issues.
It was considered magnanimous when Biden put her on the ticket, and inasmuch as the VP must be both loyal, usually powerless, and burdened by the actions and circumstances attendant to the presidency. But in an emergency anything can happen. And did.
It takes an emergency for anybody to shine. Harris’ abilities were known to those familiar with the competitive world of the politics of the nation state of California or San Francisco and vicinity. No reasonable person could dismiss someone with Harris’ political, prosecutorial, and legislative achievements as a DEI hire. That lazy and inaccurate assessment would have been applied by some, to any non white male candidate.
But much of the past few years have seen the chattering classes holding forth about such weighty matters as “word salad,” and whether Harris laughed too much. Her opponent presents himself with such clarity and dignity, you see. It is better to be underestimated than overestimated. The current vice president is looking larger.
A post script is in order. In early August our publisher posted an opinion amid the speculation about who would be the most helpful running mate for Harris to select. The smart money said the polished and popular Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro was the best bet. Pennsylvania is the state both Trump and Harris can least afford to lose. He delighted in weighing in with an alternative. Shapiro’s greatest strength was the upscale Philly suburbs, the opinion piece said. Bentsen didn’t deliver Texas to Dukakis, and Edwards did not swing North Carolina to Kerry. Harris, he reasoned, needed to reach out to the barstool Dems, the working class whites fleeing the party, who might respond to a more rough hewn populist appeal. How about the popular border state Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona? The soldier/space shuttle commander’s wife is Gabby Giffords, which answers the demagoguery about the Republican boy scratching Trump’s ear in Butler last July. Didn’t Kelly offer requisite appeal in several swing states?
This was the right track, but Harris found another way to skin this cat (while we might best avoid feline references in this highly charged election season). Minnesota Governor Tim Walz checked a lot of the same boxes as Kelly, and has a talent for getting under the skin of the weird and humorless MAGA storm troopers and theocrats. Walz was a distinct underdog in the pre selection VP speculation. He emerges as yet another pleasant surprise, after a very grim early summer.
A post script is also required in light of the non presidential primaries in the Granite State. In early September we posted an editorial regretting the strident and over the top withdrawal of support for Colin Van Ostern for congress by the popular former Governor John Lynch. We didn’t begrudge Lynch his regret at making his endorsement early. We thought his effort to explain it with a harsh and unwarranted attack on Van Ostern was out of character. We stipulated that both candidates for the Democratic nomination to succeed Annie Kuster in congress were of high quality, had few issue differences, and brought different strengths to their offer to serve. Van Ostern was steeped in local and state politics. Maggie Goodlander had impressive Washington experience. It was an embarrassment of riches for voter. Goodlander won easily. We stand behind and reiterate our disappointment with Lynch’s actions. See the website for the full text.
Goodlander not only continues a Granite State tradition of strong women holding high office, her political roots have some similarity to those of Annie Kuster, who strongly supported Van Ostern to succeed her. Kuster’s parents were prominent liberal Republican politicians in NH (see our profile of Pete McCloskey). Goodlander, married to Biden’s national security advisor, had worked for John McCain and Joe Lieberman. Her mother lost a Republican congressional primary to Bow press lord Chuck Douglas in 1988. Both of Maggie’s folks had deep ties to the Bush family. In a state such a pronounced independent streak, this should not surprise or scandalize anybody.