Kamala Harris to be a Busy Vice President?

[lpetrich]

The Memo: Harris moves signal broad role as VP | TheHill

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris garnered her own share of the news spotlight Thursday, announcing senior members of her White House team, including Tina Flournoy — currently a key aide to former President Clinton — as her chief of staff.

Harris’s first joint interview with President-elect Joe Biden since winning the election is also scheduled to be broadcast prime-time Thursday on CNN.

Apparently a sort of junior co-president, as Biden was for Obama.

Harris also differs from the last few vice presidents because she is so well positioned to succeed her boss, whether that is after one or two terms. Biden is 78, and the question of whether he will even seek a second term is up in the air.

Such a scenario has the potential to breed tension, especially given that Harris had sought the 2020 Democratic nomination. Famously, there was a fiery moment between her and Biden at the first debate of the primary process when she took him to task for his prior position on school busing.

For the moment, at least, there is no sign of those tensions reasserting themselves. Biden and Harris have a friendly chemistry in their appearances together.

...
Joel Goldstein, a professor emeritus at Saint Louis University and an expert on the vice presidency, noted that a vice president’s role is not solely self-defined. More often, he said, it is a function of the president's blind spots, and where the vice president can be of most help.

Biden, he recalled, served as a “point person” on legislative matters for Obama. But he may not need Harris to play that role. Instead, he suggested, Harris could reach parts of the Democratic constituency — and the nation — that are not so easily accessible for Biden.

 

[Politesse]

I certainly hope so. We need strong leadership at this historical moment.

 

[lpetrich]

Kamala Harris is constant on-camera presence for Biden | TheHill

One source noted that there has been a concerted effort to play up Harris's role in the administration.

The administration frequently blasts out releases about the "Biden-Harris agenda,” something that would have been unthinkable during the Trump-Pence years and that wasn't as prevalent even during the Obama-Biden years. From 2009 to 2016 it was the Obama presidency more than it was the Obama-Biden presidency, which only became a common phrase during the 2020 cycle.

...
Simmons noted that Harris’s presence is much different from earlier administrations.

“The odds are Kamala Harris is going to lead this party one day,” he said. “Every Democratic VP who's run for president since Humphrey has won the nomination."

“It’s in all of our interest that she is ready for that role,” he said of the Democratic Party.

...
Separate from the president, Harris has done television interviews in local markets to push for the coronavirus relief package in recent days, including one in West Virginia that rankled Sen. Joe Manchin, the conservative Democrat who represents the state.

...
In a video released on Twitter last week, after receiving her second vaccine shot, Harris vouched for the vaccination process, saying, “It was painless, it was simple, it takes seconds and it will safe your life. And it’ll save your family’s life.”

Seems like the Biden Admin is advertising Kamala Harris as an heir(ess) apparent, someone ready to go in case Joe Biden falters or dies. He is now 78 years old, the oldest President ever -  List of presidents of the United States by age.

 

[lpetrich]

 Here are a bunch of awful things vice presidents have said about being No. 2

John Adams, the first person to utterly despise the vice presidency: "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived."

Teddy Roosevelt, before becoming vice president: "I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than Vice-President." (He also said that the position is "not a steppingstone to anything except oblivion.")

Former vice president John Nance Garner: “The vice presidency is not worth a bucket of warm piss.” (He also said taking the job was “the worst damn fool mistake I ever made.”)

Former vice president Nelson Rockefeller discusses former vice president LBJ: "The 'real shocker,' he relates, was an encounter with an 'absolutely frustrated, absolutely furious' Lyndon Johnson in a hotel room in Miami where 'nobody was paying attention to him.'"

Former vice president Spiro Agnew: "It is a damned peculiar situation to be in, to have authority and a title and responsibility with no real power to do anything. I think it is the hardest adjustment for a man to make."

Former vice president Walter Mondale: "Over most of America's history, the vice president has been standby equipment."