Kamala Harris: Can She Be Saved? Franklin Foer’s new book, The Last Politician, was billed as a rare account—from the inside—of the Biden Administration’s first two years in office. Foer, a writer for The Atlantic, is clearly an ideological fellow traveler with the Biden Administration (which is obviously why so many otherwise tight-lipped insiders gave him the inside scoop of the last two years).
He takes great pains to make his subjects look good, even when he clearly knows they will not be perceived in a positive light. Such is the case with Vice-President Kamala Harris, who comes across as a downright awful pick for Biden’s number two.
Foer’s description of her is almost painful to read because you know that the truth about Kamala Harris’s performance and capabilities as vice president must be far more shambolic than what the author of the book wants you to take away. According to Foer, Kamala Harris simultaneously impresses and depresses her various interlocutors.
Kamala Harris: What a Mess
In one meeting, as Foer describes, Kamala Harris complicated the Biden Administration’s attempts to gain bipartisan support for the much-ballyhooed infrastructure bill. During such a meeting with Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MI), Harris was brought in to help woo him. Instead, she ended up hectoring him about how awful his preferred president, Donald J. Trump, was for the economy.
She then essentially attempted to guilt the ideologically right-wing Mississippi official into supporting the Biden agenda. At another meeting, after Harris was believed to have made a “power play” against Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Harris failed to shake Manchin’s hand at an event—prompting Manchin and the press to describe it as a snub, exacerbating the Biden White House’s long-standing issues with the fiercely independent West Virginia Democrat.
Ah, but you see, Franklin Foer says it’s all a byproduct of just how brilliant and detail-oriented the vice president is. She’s a failure because she’s just so darn successful.
That’s the insinuation that Foer wants you to take away, lest you conclude the blatantly obvious: that Harris is a one-woman dumpster fire, speeding toward political oblivion, who risks blowing up her own administration—which is already teetering on the brink—with each astounding, entirely avoidable misstep she makes.
How in the world does Foer take away that Harris is just too prepared for her own good?
With such displays of brilliance, such as Harris’ best J.B. Smoove from Curb Your Enthusiasm impression, when she went on a bizarre rant about how “we are here and I am here” while visiting Poland.
Or her recent mind-numbing (technically incorrect) definition of culture as being, “Something that comes in morning.” According to Harris’ weird word salad definition, culture is “a reflection of our moment and our time.”
The audience in question sat dumbfounded at her remarks – as most audiences that hear the vice president babble on appear.
Franklin Foer, like most left-leaning individuals, clearly thinks that former President Donald J. Trump was such an awful human being – like, literally, Hitler – that even the most absurd lie and most egregious misrepresentation of something we can all see to be terrible – in this case, Harris’s time as vice-president – is somehow really good. She’s just too darn smart.
They Wouldn’t Hold Back if Kamala Harris Was a Republican
Put the jackboot on the other foot. Imagine if Kamala Harris were a Republican vice president rather than a Democrat. Regardless of her gender or race, do you really believe that anyone at The Atlantic or elsewhere in so-called elite society would not only excuse patent ineptitude but would downright lie about it to protect the dignity of that Republican?
Of course not.
Kamala Harris is a terrible vice president, qualitatively and quantitatively. Quantitatively, she has failed to achieve a single positive outcome for any of the policies she has been tasked by President Joe Biden, himself no newcomer when it comes to displays of competence, to resolve.
Kamala Harris has failed to bring any meaningful resolution to America’s broken border. Harris is a disaster on space policy. Further, she hasn’t resolved the Russo-Ukraine War to any meaningful conclusion.
But, of course, we are all just too stupid to appreciate just how prepared and brilliant she really is. Give me – give us all – a break and admit that Harris was one of the worst possible choices for Biden’s number two.
It’s okay to admit failure. And with the Biden Administration, failure seems to be their one consistent, defining trait. Harris exemplifies that failure.
The 2024 election cannot come soon enough.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert occasionally serves as a Subject Matter Expert for various organizations, including the Department of Defense. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
