It’s not until you're somewhat deep into yet another mainstream media puff piece of Kamala Harris that you come across a rather startling admission by Joe Biden’s former chief of staff, Ron Klain. He basically admits that the Democrats’ nominee for president failed in her VP gig.
The New York Times headline Sunday certainly might make you think that Harris had mastered the intricacies of the job: “A Vice Presidential Learning Curve: How Kamala Harris Picked Her Shots,” it reads. But after first describing how Harris was “deliberate and disciplined” despite the many pitfalls she faced as the first female vice president, the Times finally got to the point (emphasis mine):
[Klain] …acknowledged that she [Harris] was not always well served by the White House. “We were all united behind the idea she should be successful. We just didn’t find the path to do it,” he said.
“People really liked her,” Mr. Klain added. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm for her. And I don’t think we did a good enough job of selling her.”
Frankly, that assessment makes all three of them—Klain, Biden, and Harris—look incompetent. Political commentator and Fox News pundit Steve Hilton took note:
Meanwhile, although much of the media has spent the days since the beginning of Kamala’s campaign pretending she had nothing to do with the border and bears no responsibility for the fiasco, the Times begrudgingly admits it here [emphasis mine]:
But she was also saddled with no-win assignments, most notably tackling the root causes of illegal immigration from Central America, exposing her to Republican criticism. Stung by an early television interview that went awry, she became skittish about mistakes, asking whether an appearance or a line in a speech might produce another vicious viral clip. And her allies believed the president’s staff often clipped her wings, appropriating her initiatives for him to announce without building up her own public profile.
Notice how the authors manage to criticize what we can presume to be Republicans in their angle? Her senseless ramblings might produce “another vicious viral clip.” But what exactly is vicious about playing her own words?
We’ve also been regularly told how close the president and vice president are and that they have a deep friendship and respect for each other. Doesn't really pass the smell test, though:
Ms. Harris came into the role without a close relationship with her new president. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the two did not campaign together much in 2020, and there were sore feelings among some around Mr. Biden, including Jill Biden, stemming from Ms. Harris’s attack on him during a Democratic primary debate over his position on busing to integrate schools in the 1970s.
Biden also didn’t really need her “expertise”:
After a half-century in Washington, Mr. Biden did not need Ms. Harris to explain the capital to him, or at least did not think he did. She came with scant experience in international affairs that the former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman particularly valued. He did not assign her to lead major negotiations with lawmakers as Mr. Obama had him do.
The long article is mostly deferential and complimentary to the vice president, but one can’t help but come away with one key takeaway: they’re trying to sell us a failed vice president as the next commander-in-chief. What could go wrong?