How Should We Judge the Harris Vice Presidency?

More than 200 years after its creation, the vice presidency remains the least defined, and outright oddest, major political office in the United States. With almost no formal powers but the critical responsibility of needing to be prepared to assume the leadership of the nation at any moment, vice presidents occupy a position that, like the electoral college that selects them, was a clumsy 1787 solution to a practical problem of constitutional mechanics.

Like the presidency, the vice presidency has evolved over time, and no longer resembles the description of its first historical occupant as "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." But it can still be an awkward position to hold and a difficult one to evaluate from the outside. How can we judge whether the vice president is doing a good job without a shared set of expectations about what the job actually is?

Joe Biden has explained repeatedly that he wants Kamala Harris to be the "last voice in the room" when major decisions are made. In the early months of the current presidential administration, it wasn't hard to find sympathetic press stories emphasizing the "large role" or "central role" or "integral role" that Harris was expected to play in the Biden White House. The model for her vice presidency, Biden and his aides often said, was Biden's own experience serving under Barack Obama, when he was considered to be an unusually successful and influential vice president by historical standards.

But it's impossible for Biden and Harris to replicate the relationship that existed between Obama and Biden. Harris is simply not situated in the same place that Biden was as VP, and the implications of this difference have already begun to emerge only five months into her term. For one thing, the unique governing contribution that Biden could make was clear from the moment that he was chosen as Obama's running mate. As a six-term senator who had chaired the Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees, he brought extensive national policy-making experience and a collection of valuable personal relationships, both on Capitol Hill and around the world, to an administration whose leader had served only briefly in federal office. 

Moreover, Biden was also widely (and, as it turned out, incorrectly) believed to have abandoned his own presidential ambitions after 2008, which was another important asset to his vice presidency. He benefited from the presumption that his judgments and actions were motivated by sincerity and loyalty, rather than by angling to benefit his own future political prospects. And nobody would have thought to argue that Biden as vice president should intentionally distance himself from involvement in this or that thorny issue or crisis in order to protect himself politically for a future campaign.

In contrast, Harris is widely viewed by party leaders and media figures as highly likely to run for president as Biden's heir apparent in 2024 or 2028, but as lacking a clear domain of unique authority to bring to the current administration. She isn't an old Washington hand like Biden, Dick Cheney, or George H. W. Bush; she doesn't have a signature set of policy priorities like Al Gore; she doesn't provide close long-standing personal ties to a key party constituency like Mike Pence. So any substantive responsibility that Harris takes on will inevitably be viewed by other political elites in terms of its strategic implications for her presumed future presidential candidacy, rather than as a reflection of sincere dedication, interest, or expertise.

We're already seeing this happen with Harris's role as the Biden administration's point person on Latin American migration, the subject of her first trip abroad earlier this month. Conventional wisdom in Washington agrees that the situation at the southern border is indeed a serious national problem that deserves urgent attention from the top levels of the executive branch. Conventional wisdom in Washington also seems equally certain that Harris is making a big mistake by getting anywhere near it. I recently spoke with one national reporter who suggested to me that, because of its potentially risky politics, the migration issue must have been assigned to Harris involuntarily. That doesn't seem to me like an act that would be in character for Joe Biden, and at least one media report suggests that Biden and Harris thought taking the lead on addressing the regional conditions causing migration would be an opportunity for her to shoulder an important responsibility and gain international experience. But some of Harris's own sympathizers are openly worried that she is being "set up to fail" by the president, walking into a political "trap" consisting of "the most difficult policy challenges in 21st-century America."

This prevailing sentiment may be right about the strategic calculations here. And it may also be right about Harris's political acumen, which seems to be suffering a declining reputation after her initially positive reception in Washington as a charismatic rising star in the Obama mold. (Note how many people think that someone who was just elected to national executive office could really use some good career advice.) 

But Harris's dilemma is not simply a product of her supposed naivete about her own political interests or Biden's supposed insensitivity to them. Rather, it is a natural consequence of her new position—where holding the status of potential president-in-waiting is often seen as more important than whatever the occupant might be expected to accomplish while waiting to be president. If it were otherwise, perhaps a vice president who tackled a difficult national issue would be praised, not second-guessed, for addressing the governing challenges of today rather than merely protecting her personal ambitions for tomorrow.

It seems unsatisfying to judge the success of a vice presidency solely on the grounds of whether the incumbent managed to use the position to elevate herself into a different one. But the lack of independent responsibilities or a consensus job description for the office has prevented the Washington political community, or the American electorate, from forming an alternative widely-accepted set of standards. Harris herself says, both publicly and (apparently) in private, that she views her vice presidential role as being a substantively engaged and personally loyal governing partner to Biden, not just a once-and-future presidential candidate in her own right. To consider how well she seems to be meeting her own stated vision for the office is not the only valid way to evaluate her performance. But it seems like a thoroughly fair one, regardless of whether her further aspirations are satisfied in the years to come.

Vice Presidential Debate Recap: Nothing Interesting Happened...Thankfully

The vice presidential debate Wednesday night between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris was such a crucial ritual of American democracy—so precious to our electoral process that it had to be held in person despite an active national epidemic—that many leading figures in American journalism found their attention repeatedly distracted by a fly that landed on Pence's head partway through the evening.

Both participants are classic pols with well-crafted classic pol personas that don't compel them to answer questions they don't find it advisable to answer, and the vice presidential debate is always a slightly unnatural format because it mostly involves attacking or defending two other people who aren't in the room. The relative discipline and polish of both Pence and Harris compared to this year's presidential nominees makes it easier for the strategic calculations of both campaigns to come through: Democrats want the election to turn on COVID-19 and health care, while Republicans would rather talk about China and the Green New Deal.

The lower rhetorical temperature compared to last week's presidential faceoff was nominally praised by commentators, but the consensus media judgment that "no minds would be changed" as a result, as well as the fixation on the fly, betrayed a certain general boredom with the proceedings. But because debates are a lousy basis on which to choose a candidate—especially vice presidential debates—this was actually a good sign. There's really nothing wrong with a boring debate, after all. There are worse things in politics than prosaic adequacy.

More on the Vice Presidential Selection of Kamala Harris

I have a new piece today in the New York Times that focuses on what the selection of Kamala Harris tells us about Joe Biden. Over the course of his long political career, I argue, Biden has always been a man of his party. He thus was unsurprisingly sensitive to pressure (or encouragement, if you prefer) from within Democratic circles to choose a woman, especially a black woman, and especially Harris. And the undeniable similarities and parallels between the figures of Harris, now very much Biden's political heir apparent, and Barack Obama merely underscore the extent to which the Democratic Party is still forged in Obama's image.

There wasn't enough room for me to touch on it in the piece, but it's become clear that Biden's organizational ties to the institutional Democratic Party are also very strong—probably stronger than those of any Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson. For example, while Obama mostly disdained and neglected the Democratic National Committee, preferring to build his own personal voter outreach structure (ultimately called Organizing for America), the Biden campaign seems to be closely integrated with the DNC and much more invested in its success. And the retrospective accounts of his vice presidential search process that are starting to pop up in the press all describe a very extensive and elaborate intelligence-gathering operation designed to synthesize input from a wide array of party actors and stakeholders.

Here are a few other final thoughts as another round of veepstakes draws to a close:

1. It's not entirely clear from the reports I've seen whether Harris was the front-runner from the beginning. But it does seem obvious that a decision was made fairly early in the process to prioritize black women and—critically—to leave other party members and the press with the same impression. Once you've signaled that you're so interested in a black running mate that you're considering multiple non-traditional picks like Susan Rice, Karen Bass, or Val Demings, you'd be running quite a risk of disappointment by settling on, say, Gretchen Whitmer instead.

2. This strategic framing by the Biden campaign is one of the reasons why the Harris pick has been described as "safe" and "obvious." She's certainly the safe choice in comparison to Rice, Bass, or Demings. But a campaign that had floated a different mix of finalists might not have produced the same response.

3. One of the important issues that this search process has demonstrated is the underrepresentation of women, especially women who aren't white, in the traditional vice presidential (and presidential) feeder offices. Harris is one of only two black women who have ever been elected to the Senate in American history (Carol Moseley-Braun, who served one term from Illinois in the 1990s, is the other), and no black woman has ever served as a state governor. In our current political moment, the demand for national elected leaders who are not white men—at least on the Democratic side—is exceeding the ready supply. If Biden had ruled out Harris, for whatever reason, he would have been faced with a real dilemma, forcing him to relax either his preference for a black running mate or the normal perceptions of the appropriate credentials for presidential office.

4. The press has made a lot of hay out of the Trump campaign's incoherent set of attacks on Harris as it simultaneously attempts to paint her, like Biden, as both a radical anti-police anarchist and an overly punitive agent of the carceral state. But my guess is that the bulk of Republican messaging, in paid advertisements and surrogate talking points, will emphasize the former claim, with the latter saved for a few targeted social media communications intended to decrease turnout on the left. As with much else in politics, follow the money: tweets are free, but TV ads are expensive.

5. The vice presidential selection is always good for a few days of media frenzy in an otherwise slow summer week for news, but it's worth remembering that running mates normally fade into the background as the fall campaign heats up (with one historical exception that is, above all, a cautionary tale). And the next VP debate to have an important effect on the presidential race will be the first one ever.

A Few Thoughts on the 2020 Democratic Veepstakes

We've had a series of reports this week about the state of the internal deliberations over Joe Biden's selection of running mate, including from the New York Times, Politico, Politico again, Bloomberg News, and CNBC. These various accounts are consistent in some but not all respects; in particular, some suggest that Kamala Harris remains the clear favorite while others imply that her chances are fading. Here are the main points that I've taken away from the reporting so far:

1. The Biden campaign doesn't seem to be doing much to dispel the assumption that the final leading candidates are Harris, Susan Rice, and Karen Bass, with Val Demings and Tammy Duckworth still in the mix but as less probable alternatives. Of course, campaigns sometimes try to fake out reporters in advance in order to make a bigger splash when the announcement comes. But it would be an uncharacteristically risky move for the Biden team to leave the impression that they were probably going to select a black woman and then not do so.

2. There is real opposition to Harris within the party and to some extent within Biden's own orbit. This opposition is primarily personal, not based on strategic or ideological considerations. The criticism offered to the press this week that she was too "ambitious" landed badly because of its sexist overtones, but it also seemed like an intended euphemism for something more serious—selfishness? untrustworthiness?—that would have been too explosive an accusation to make without some additional evidence or corroboration.

3. But if Harris is not the final choice, Biden will need an explanation for why he preferred somebody else that can be made publicly to activists and voters, not just on background to journalists. This explanation doesn't need to be critical of Harris, but it does need to cite distinctive virtues of the alternative candidate that citizens can be expected to find duly impressive. Of the other apparent remaining contenders, Duckworth already comes with a readymade case for her selection, but the rest do not. While personal loyalty and collegiality are indeed valuable qualities in a running mate, the Biden camp would need a stronger justification than that for reaching down into the House rank-and-file or outside elective office, and one hasn't really been made so far.

4. Of all the "veepstakes" episodes in my memory, this one has been the least dominated by speculation about who might deliver a particular battleground state or key voting bloc to the national ticket and the most dominated by discussions about who might be the best vice president once the election is over. This is probably due in large part to Biden's steady lead in the polls—a rare luxury for a non-incumbent—but it is still a positive development. Whatever one might think about the way Harris or any of the other candidates have been treated, it is much better for the parties and the entire political system if leaders focus on the running mate as a potential governing partner and political successor, not as a mere tool of campaign strategy.

5. Many people seem to be operating under the assumption that Joe Biden, if elected, would not seek re-election in 2024. But it isn't very clear whether Joe Biden is one of those people.

So What Does Choosing Mike Pence Tell Us About Trump?

Earlier this week, I argued that we should primarily evaluate the selection of a vice presidential running mate by considering what it tells us about the presidential nominee, rather than merely speculate about the (likely minimal) effect of the pick on the outcome of the election.

So what do we learn about Donald Trump, as a presidential candidate or a future president, from the choice of Indiana governor Mike Pence and the process that led to it? Here are a few things that struck me:

1. Trump is famous for demanding loyalty, but he did not insist on a running mate who had endorsed him (or remained neutral) in the presidential primaries. Pence had endorsed Ted Cruz prior to the Indiana primary, though that did not prevent Trump from winning the state easily and knocking Cruz out of the race.

2. Pence has held both legislative and executive office, having served for 12 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and one term as governor of Indiana. However, his previous experience and responsibilities are not as extensive as past running mates chosen by presidential candidates with little or no service in Washington, such as Joe Biden (Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair and ex-Judiciary Committee chair), Paul Ryan (House Budget Committee chair), Dick Cheney (ex-Secretary of Defense, White House chief of staff, and House Republican Whip), Lloyd Bentsen (Senate Finance Committee chair), and George H. W. Bush (ex-CIA director, ambassador to China and the United Nations, House member, and RNC chair). Unlike these other political veterans, Pence also lacks a reputation as a policy specialist or managerial heavyweight. A Vice President Pence would doubtless assist a President Trump in navigating the ways of Washington, but it is not immediately clear that he would necessarily play a critical role in making policy or administering the executive branch.

3. The choice of Pence can be viewed as something of a bridge-building gesture to the subset of movement conservative leaders who remain wary of Trump. It is likely that Pence will serve as the chief intermediary between the organizational apparatus of the traditional Republican Party and the Trump campaign (and, potentially, presidential administration), and that this was a major selling point in the eyes of the pro-Pence faction among Trump's advisors.

4. The process by which Pence was selected seems as revealing as the final selection. If news media accounts are accurate, Trump faced a difference of opinion between political aides who mostly preferred Pence and family members who mostly preferred Gingrich. The political professionals got their way—though a few sources are reporting today that Trump almost changed his mind last night, long after Pence's selection had been leaked to the press. The public rollout has also been awkward; Trump canceled his scheduled press conference this morning in response to the massacre in France but confirmed Pence's selection anyway via Twitter (which may have been prompted by today's deadline for Pence to withdraw from the Indiana ballot). We are left with a picture of a candidate who is unusually dependent on his own family for political advice and who appears less than completely satisfied with the choice of Pence. A potential Trump presidency may not be especially methodical, resolute, or routinely deferential to expert opinion.

5. The evaluation of Pence's suitability as a running mate or potential vice president is dependent upon the identity of the alternatives. Compared to the other members of Trump's short list (Gingrich and Christie, with Jeff Sessions and Michael Flynn as secondary options), Pence looks like a safe and even optimal choice, suggesting that Trump is more risk-averse and politically savvy than he looks. But many other leading Republican figures who would otherwise be natural VP candidates were not under active consideration, whether due to their lack of interest or Trump's. Compared to a longer hypothetical menu of potential running mates and vice presidents, Pence seems like an adequate but not unusually inspired choice.

Why the Vice Presidential Picks Matter

Vice presidential running mates for non-incumbent presidential candidates are, by tradition and necessity, chosen in the summer of an election year between the end of the primary season and the start of the party's national convention—unlike the other senior members of a president's administration, who are usually not revealed until the election itself is over. For this reason, the vice presidential choice is usually treated by the news media primarily as a manifestation of the presidential nominee's campaign strategy rather than as a clue about his or her approach to governing. During the "veepstakes" phase preceding the official selection, potential contenders are mostly evaluated by pundits on the basis of electoral criteria, and this line of analysis is routinely applied to the eventual choice once he or she is finally announced to the public.

Many of these strategic angles predictably recur year after year. What social groups in the mass public might a particular vice presidential candidate attract to the party? How effective are the candidate's campaign skills? Would the candidate bolster the ticket's standing in a key battleground state? Will the running mate generate excitement among the party base, or supply gravitas, or persuasively vouch for the virtues of the presidential nominee?

Presidential candidates also give careful consideration to such questions when making up their minds—since, in their view, one critical job of a running mate is to help win the presidency. Some past vice presidential selections, such as John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin in 2008, were almost entirely motivated by short-term electoral considerations; McCain was trailing in the polls and hoped that a surprise pick and a woman on the ticket would both shake up the race and help him coax disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters to cross the partisan aisle.

But little evidence exists that the identity of the running mates normally influences the preferences of voters. (Palin turned out to be a rare exception to this rule, but her unpopular candidacy backfired and ultimately benefited the opposition.) It is therefore perfectly appropriate for political analysts to interpret the VP choice as reflecting the electoral strategy of the presidential candidate, but we should be wary of suggestions that the outcome of the election itself is likely to be determined by the decision.

The running mates are much more important for the window that they provide into the presidential candidates who select them: what perceived personal limitations or weaknesses do they wish to address, and what kind of presidency might they have if elected? George W. Bush's selection of Dick Cheney in 2000 indicated that the vice president would take a major role in the policy-making and administration of the executive branch—in contrast to his father's choice of Dan Quayle in 1988, who was clearly meant to be a junior partner with little independent responsibility. Bill Clinton chose Al Gore in part to demonstrate that he would maintain a distance from the left wing of his party while in office; Gore's decision to choose Joe Lieberman eight years signaled a personal break with Clinton. Barack Obama's selection of Joe Biden reflected a perceived need to cement good working relationships with key members of Congress by choosing a Capitol Hill veteran. Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan seemed designed to reassure conservatives of his ideological devotion.

Within a week or so, we'll know the identity of each party's vice presidential nominee in 2016. Plenty of media coverage will be devoted to gaming out the potential strategic implications of the running mates for the outcome of the election. But it is even more important to consider what the selections reveal about the prospective presidents who made them—in order to better inform ourselves about the choice that awaits us in the voting booth this November.

Geography and the Veepstakes

Geography usually ranks near the top of the considerations that are commonly said to matter when selecting a vice presidential candidate. Political folk wisdom tells us that a would-be president seeks to balance the ticket by choosing a running mate from a different region of the nation, while a prospective VP from a critical battleground state holds the promise of attracting a favorite-son (or -daughter) vote that could tilt that state to his or her party, thus offering an advantage in the electoral college.

John F. Kennedy's choice of Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate in 1960 is often treated as the model case of vice presidential selection. Johnson was credited in retrospect with helping to keep most of the South in the Democratic column—especially his home state of Texas, which Kennedy carried by less than 50,000 votes—at a time when the Democratic Party could no longer take the region for granted in presidential elections. When speculation turns in the late spring and summer of an election year to the identity of the vice presidential candidates, governors and senators from swing states like Ohio and Florida are often among the most frequently mentioned, reflecting the assumption that their presence on the ticket could potentially prove decisive to the outcome just as Johnson supposedly did.

As a rule, however, presidential candidates have not consistently elevated geography among other considerations when selecting running mates. Joe Biden (D 2008/2012), Sarah Palin (R 2008), Dick Cheney (R 2000/2004), and Joe Lieberman (D 2000) were all residents of small states that were already electorally safe for their party. On the other hand, the home states of John Edwards (D 2004) and Jack Kemp (R 1996) were almost certain to vote for the opposition regardless of their presence on the ticket. Paul Ryan (R 2012) did come from the battleground state of Wisconsin, but he had never represented more than one-eighth of the state's residents in Congress (after the election, Mitt Romney advisors revealed that Ryan was not chosen because the campaign thought that he would deliver Wisconsin to the Republican Party). The home state of Al Gore (D 1992/1996) was politically competitive but not widely considered pivotal to the national outcome.

Since Johnson in 1960, two other Texans have been nominated for vice president: George H. W. Bush (R 1980/1984) and Lloyd Bentsen (D 1988). Geography played a role in the selection of both, though other considerations seemed to matter more; both Bush and Bentsen were identified with rival party factions to the presidential candidates who chose them, and were placed on the ticket largely to promote party unity. Despite Ohio's longstanding importance in the electoral college, no Ohioan has appeared on a national ticket since John W. Bricker served as Thomas E. Dewey's running mate in 1944. Florida, a more recent swing state, has yet to be represented by a presidential or vice presidential nominee of either party.

It appears, then, that modern presidential candidates seldom choose running mates whom they believe will help them carry a specific state—much less an entire region. Indeed, there is little evidence that parties normally perform significantly better in the VP's home state compared to what they would otherwise expect (most presidential nominees, in contrast, attract a reliable favorite-son bonus of a few percentage points in the state's popular vote).

Of the major potential running mates for Hillary Clinton floated so far in the media (Tim Kaine, Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, Cory Booker, and Tom Perez), only one—Kaine—resides in a battleground state. Similarly, the apparent field of candidates for VP on the Republican ticket (Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions, and Joni Ernst) includes a single swing-state representative (Ernst, though Iowa casts only 6 electoral votes). This recent article suggests that somebody in the Trump campaign—probably pollster Kellyanne Conway—is talking up Pence by portraying his selection as allowing Trump to "shore up the Rust Belt," but there is little reason to believe that many voters outside Indiana (a state that is normally safe Republican territory) would care very much about Pence's presence on the ticket.

If Kaine or Ernst is nominated for the vice presidency this year, it is probable that political geography played a role in boosting them over other potential candidates. But recent history suggests that most presidential nominees view the potential electoral impact in a particular state or region as sufficiently modest that it does not outweigh other important factors relevant to the choice of running mate, from ideological positioning and political experience to campaign skill and personal rapport. We should not be surprised, then, if the 2016 presidential candidates follow this pattern by selecting running mates from safely red or blue states rather than electoral battlegrounds.