THE HARRIS EFFECT
Joe Biden seeing the impact of his vice presidential nominee
In each and every issue of the magazine The Week one can read many mini-symposia wherein various commentators share their take on the news of…well, the week. The one I read the other day concerned itself with the sagacity, or lack of same, in Lunchpail Joe’s pick of California Senator and fellow presidential candidate Kamala Harris to be his Vice Presidential nominee.
This line of inquiry goes back a long way. I’ve been following elections for sixty years now, and the tradition was old then. I came perhaps to political junkiedom a trifle early, as I was assigned to be Dick Nixon’s campaign manager by our second grade teacher, opposed by my prospective best friend—I had just changed schools—who was in charge of selling Jack Kennedy to our little band of tykes. We each had bulletin board space-- that I remember quite well-- and I seem to recollect, a little more dimly, having to give a campaign speech. For some reason, I was rather fuddled by a tradition I had heard of that candidates were supposed to be somehow ethical and vote for their opponent, and for the life of me, I can’t recall how I resolved that dilemma, though I do recall asking advice from several of my betters, and receiving nothing useful, invariably reducing to something about using my conscience. I doubt that I felt as though I had a conscience, perhaps had even heard of the concept, so I was, as would prove to be the rule rather than the exception during my life, at sea in a universe of ethical dilemmas.
In any case, I, or at least Nixon, won that election, from which I remember taking little satisfaction. As I walked home amid the falling crepuscule, I was quite aware of identifying with the ancient Roman commanders who were given their triumph through the streets of the capital, but only with a spoilsport whispering in their ear about the transience of glory. For I knew that my takeaway from the episode was likely to be the injustice which had befallen me when the teacher had screeched at me to quit tidying the bulletin board, which she had told me to do, and get back to my goddam seat and get some real work done. Which would have been bad enough in and of itself, but not ten minutes later I evoked even more wrath when she found a little poster (‘Nixon’ written in five colors of crayon on a strip of notebook paper) on the floor which I had dropped in my haste to avoid the cascade of blows with which I felt I was being threatened by delayed compliance. Little did I realize that, in point of fact, some sixty years later, what I most remember is a pleasant conversation with my Democratic counterpart concerning the irony of the scion of a Republican family being put in charge of a Democratic campaign, whist the G.O.P. banner was being held high by a Democratic household’s kid.
All of which I digress to as a way of telling about my credentials as an experienced observer of the electorate. And on election night, as I watched Henry Cabot Lodge cruise to defeat in the Vice Presidential election (and no, I didn’t have to look that up), it dawned on me that perhaps Henry Cabot Lodge would not be well remembered when the page had turned to the twenty-first century. Or maybe it didn’t, but it should have. Many elections have come and gone, and I find it difficult to disagree with a pundit or two along the way who have calmly and flatly stated “People don’t vote for Vice Presidents”. I might modify that slightly by saying that I do think that people might vote against Vice Presidents. I don’t think that, for example, Sarah Palin or Spiro Agnew did a lot of good when placed on the ticket. I might even concede to the punditry the notion that The Donald needed a Mike Pence on the ticket to assuage the worries of the Republican evangelical base about their scapegrace at the head of the ticket. But overall, I can’t think of too many running mates who probably did very much to factor into the outcome.
As for Harris, the writers in The Week’s symposium were mostly agreed that she was a good choice, though I liked best the slight dissent from conventional wisdom by somebody who grumbled that she was too progressive to please moderates and too moderate to please progressives, though these days one could probably say that about a lot of people. She does check a lot of boxes, is likable and articulate, the much-demanded woman of color (though not Afro-American, which might be more hurtful than anyone realizes—I don’t know about the veracity of this one way or other, but more than one pundit insisted that Barack H. Obama was viewed with skepticism in the black community because he had no origins in the original civil rights movement--) and I expect her to effectively prosecute Mike Pence in their debate, but I’ll be pleasantly surprised if she ends up having much effect in November. In 1984 my workmates were insistent that no woman in America would vote against Fritz Mondale because his running mate was female. That worked out.