Harris’ Dilemma
Running for President as Vice President is uniquely challengng.
NPR (“Harris says she ‘will not be silent’ about humanitarian toll in Gaza“):
Vice President Kamala Harris, in remarks Thursday after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that while she held an “unwavering commitment to Israel,” she “will not be silent” about the humanitarian toll in Gaza.
“I’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating: Israel has a right to defend itself and how it does so matters,” Harris said. But, she said, she discussed with Netanyahu her “serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians.”
In her remarks, Harris reiterated the deal proposed by Biden that would ultimately lead to a permanent end to the fighting, the release of all Israeli hostages by Hamas, and a complete Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza. Earlier Thursday, John Kirby, the NSC spokesman, said “gaps … remain” in the negotiations but “we believe that they are of a nature that they can be closed.”
Harris said she told Netanyahu “it is time to get this deal done.”
[…]
Harris, who is now the likely Democratic presidential nominee, inherits this war as she attempts to maintain a delicate balancing act in a race where one misplaced word on the conflict can cost her support in key states that Democrats need to keep the White House.
“Let us all condemn terrorism and violence. Let us all do what we can to prevent the suffering of innocent civilians,” Harris said Thursday. “And let us condemn anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and hate of any kind.”
She is maintaining the administration’s support of Israel and trying to not alienate supporters of the Jewish state, who make up a key Democratic constituency. But she is also expressing sympathy for Palestinian civilians killed in the conflict and trying to win back some of the young, progressive, Black and Brown voters whom Biden alienated with his response to the war.
“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating,” she said Thursday. “The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.”
As Biden’s vice president, Harris has remained in lockstep with the president on policy, including his steadfast commitment to the security of Israel.
But there have been other times where the vice president has differed in tone, particularly in describing what she has called the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.
In both public and private, Harris is seen to show a greater understanding and empathy for Palestinians, multiple people told NPR. And they say she’s also shown greater empathy for protesters demonstrating against Israel’s military operation.
“If you look at her public remarks about Gaza as vice president, unlike Biden, she really did manage to convey a much greater empathy and sympathy for the suffering of Palestinians,” said Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Harris is striking the right balance here, I think, both in terms of politics and policy. But there’s a decided awkwardness in simultaneously running for President as her own woman while also being Joe Biden’s deputy. And it raises some uncomfortable questions.
Certainly, it’s not entirely novel, even in the modern era. Al Gore did this in 2000, as did George H.W. Bush in 1988. And both, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, distinguished themselves from their boss.
But this is different. First and foremost, we’re now in a 24/7/365 media environment that dissects every word out of the candidates’ mouths in a way that wasn’t the case a quarter century ago before the advent of social media. Second, both Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were toward the end of their second terms, so their legacies were more established. Third, Gore and Bush won the nomination in contested party primaries, so had earned the right to proclaim a new vision for their parties; Harris had it handed to her as a fait accompli by Biden himself.
Further, while the differences in her stance and Biden’s are largely matters of tone and emphasis, this will naturally feed into Republican calls for Biden to step down and related questions about whether Biden is actually calling the shots in his own White House.
Indeed, in the context of Biden having stepped aside over intra-party concerns over his ability to perform, I find it a bit odd that his Vice President is meeting with foreign heads of state, let alone a close ally in the middle of an existential war, and expressing her independent thoughts. While I hope it will be the case come noon next January 20, she is not now the Commander-in-Chief nor in charge of US foreign policy.
This gets into a discussion I’ve been having with other people about the benefits of incumbency. Sitting vps who run for president–whether it be Nixon in 1960, Humphrey in 1968, Bush Sr. in 1988, or Gore in 2000–whether they win or lose, they seem to perform worse than the presidents they served under. Of course, part of that may have to do with parties being punished the longer they are in power. After all, FDR did worse in 1940 and 1944 than he did in his previous two elections. The situation we’re in now, with a president serving just one term before turning things over to his vp, doesn’t really have an exact precedent; the closest I suppose is LBJ and Humphrey.
Still, I do think there’s a long history of vps being seen in their time as smaller figures than the presidents they served under. This is literally about as old as the country: probably the first example was John Adams to George Washington. And I think there’s a tendency, when presidential candidates choose a running mate, to pick someone less charismatic, less splashy, less exciting than themselves. If those people go on to be elected and become vp, they automatically take on a secondary role, so that by the time they run for president the public is predisposed to view them almost like the president’s understudy. There are possible exceptions (maybe Teddy Roosevelt), but it’s generally true, and it’s a pattern that’s hard to break.
One thing Harris has going for her is that Biden himself is one such former vp who was seen as less charismatic than his boss, which means she isn’t starting from the same lofty starting point.
Given that Netanyahu’s next stop is Mara Lago, I think it only makes sense that the Democratic candidate meets with him, too.
What of the American hostages?
@Kylopod:
Indeed, that’s been the legacy of the VP role. And Pence appeared twice as shrunken next to his larger-than-life principal. But Trump being a perceived existential threat to U.S. democracy seems to have expanded — no — warped politics in a way that has hyperbolized what were the normal aspects of it. That’s my two-cent theory, anyway.
To be fair to Harris, that framing of “Israeli hostages” seems to have been a PBS framing
I find it considerably more “odd” that said foreign head of state (close ally in a existential war) is meeting today with an ex-CoC in the same place the ex-CoC hid top secret documents from his own government.
Who cares what the R’s thing about Joe remaining prez. There desire is simply to way Harris down with the duties of the presidency and the attendant risks/rewards the position presents and keep her off the campaign trail so that the comparison in energy to the Felon isn’t as stark. The Felon’s base may want Joe out, but it is doubtful that this complaint will move any undecided voters one way or another.
Harris should be her own candidate and enunciate her differences with Joe, to do so isn’t disloyalty. She doesn’t need to beat those differences to death, but she needs to clearly articulate them.
@Joe: @Scott F.: As a rule, I don’t think US leaders should meet with foreign opposition party leaders (especially in the case of allies and partners) and vice-versa. Still, Trump meeting with Netanyahu doesn’t give the impression Trump might be setting US foreign policy.
I see Kylopod beat me to the Hubert Humphrey race in ’68 as an instructive analogy. Would only add that when HHH broke with the LBJ policy on VietNam, he very nearly beat Nixon. A damned close run thing, as Wellington said of Waterloo.
@James Joyner:
No, Trump is prepping his future foreign policy. Advanced staging. Forward deployment. You know the drill, Doc J.
@JKB:
Thanks for the additional context/correction.
@James Joyner:
Not sure what you mean here? Who is the “foreign opposition party leader”? Netanyahu is Head of State.
@JohnMc:
One of the wild cards in explaining that election was the impact of Wallace. I believe that was the first election to use exit polls, but I don’t know if they ever asked Wallace voters who they’d have voted for if it was just Humphrey vs. Nixon. Wallace was winning over many traditionally Democratic voters, not just Dixiecrats in the South, but a fair number of white working-class voters in the North. But a lot of those voters were beginning to shift to the Republican Party anyway.
@MarkedMan: James can correct me if I’m wrong, but I had the same initial question but then re-read it as a general rule-of-thumb that goes both ways. Hence the “vice-versa”, which was the part relevant to this situation.
@MarkedMan: @Franklin: Right: I’m stating a general preference for reciprocal policy. It’s unseemly for Netanyahu to meet with Trump and vice-versa but hardly unprecedented. But for a VP running for POTUS in her own right, it raises different questions.
First. The major problem Humphrey had vis-a-vis LBJ was thst he would not and or could not distance himself from LBJ’s Vietnam Policy. By the time opposition Democrats got behind Humphrey it was too late. Humphrey closed the gap but Nixon won by a small margin.
The major problem Harris has vis-a-vis Biden is Immigration, and on that she can rightfully say that there was a legitimate bipartisan propsal on the table that Trump ordered Republican legislators to ignore. She still has to address it with her proposal.
Second. I don’t find the circumstance of Kamala Harris meeting with a foreign leader (Netanyahu) unusual at all, especially given Republican actions to end-run Biden now and Obama earlier. Netanyahu is playing a dngerous game, and meeting with Harris is a sign that Bibi is hedging his bet on a Trump presidency.
We are in a new political world.
@James Joyner:
That greatly depends on who is being given an impression. Netanyahu meeting Trump impresses upon his sycophants and those undecided voters they may be associated with them that somehow TFG matters in US foreign policy now and in the future. It gives an impression of relevance and power to Trump that he in no way deserves.
@James Joyner: The VP meets with foreign leaders all the time. Whether it’s Biden going to Ukraine to extract bribes, Pence standing awkwardly near the President of Whereever at a funeral, or Kamala meeting with Netanyahu, it’s all pretty much the same.
@James Joyner: Got it. Although Netanyahu has aligned himself (and of course, Israel) with the Republican Party in general and Donald Trump in particular. Might be his personal best hope for holding onto power but it is a terrible but perhaps inevitable mistake for Israel’s interests.
@James Joyner: @MarkedMan: For some reason, I can’t imagine that Bibi Netanyahu lies awake at night lamenting having been acting in an unseemly manner. But maybe that’s just me.
@Gustopher:..The VP meets with foreign leaders all the time.
I was 10 years old in 1958 and I do have a vague memory of these TV newsreels of Vice President Richard Nixon visiting South America.
I don’t think that I had any grasp of the situation.
@DeD:
My guess is Trump’s main interest is to see if Bibi can lean on the one-issue (Israel) mega-donors and try to talk Bibi into openly campaigning for him. Policy just ain’t Trump’s thang.
Kamala has to play a different game: Gin up the base so they turn out to vote. Almost certainly the failure on that front is why Hillary lost to Trump and the reason Biden bowed out as it became apparent he had developed the same fault.
There will be plenty of free publicity if she stirs the right pots so the ad-money isn’t as critical.
@James Joyner:
@DeD:
On this topic, Trump meeting with Orban is going down VERY badly in Europe, which is getting thoroughly sick of of Orban jumping into the Ukraine/Russia/US triangle and being performatively stupid in order to get headlines (=votes) in Hungary.
Up to an unprecedented threat to kick Hungary out of the rotating presidency.
And sitting on their hands as Ukraine cuts Hungary’s gas pipeline.
That is Kyiv, and indirectly the EU states in general, indicating that Orban’s clowning around is very much not appreciated in this matter.
There are a lot of Trump-publicans who seem to assume that Europe will just sit back and put up up with anything a Trump presidency might do over Ukraine/Russia.
They may be in for a rude awakening.
@Joe:
Sure! Because at Mar a Lago, Netanyahu will be told absolutely everything and anything that he wants to hear.
In this campaign, Trump has become Chauncey Gardner, saying anything that anyone wants to her at the moment. He has no knowledge of the past, no thoughts to the future, but only with a tunnel vision of what he needs to say at that moment that will make his audience value him most in that interaction… forgotten just as quickly as said.
He speaks with no authority.
@dazedandconfused:
It certainty did not help. Nor did Hillary spending time hanging out with Katy Perry and Beyonce when she should have been talking to plumbers, truck drivers and other working folks in rust belt states. The victory lap started a little early. Hubris…
@anjin-san:
UK reference, for what little it may be worth:
Starmer (and the rest of the Labour top line) spent absolutely zero time chatting with celebrities and media icons.
They turned at rallies etc, but I can’t recall any “face time”.
Labour campaign focus was resolutely on “ordinary people”.
@JohnSF: Interesting info, but unfortunately Trump’s buffoonery on foreign affairs won’t hurt him one bit in this election.
@Franklin:
Probably true, unfortunately.
There’s a large propotion of the Trump vote base who seem to think all policy, foreign or domestic, is best dealt with on the basis of “Belly up to the bar, Joe Six-Pack, and talk like a man!”