By presenting Kamala Harris as a true leader, Biden can help himself to a second term as president

simple question as we contemplate the outrageous role Vice President Kamala Harris will play in voters’ imaginations as they decide whether to award President Biden with a second term: what made Barack Obama better prepared than Harris to become leader of the free world to become?

After all, he had less experience on the national stage and almost nothing foreign

policy

experience before becoming president. He was a community organizer, law professor, and Illinois state senator who served as a United States Senator for about 10 minutes before deciding he was ready to move to the Oval Office.

Harris was the District Attorney in San Francisco, the Attorney General of California, a United States Senator, and a brief front-runner in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination before Biden named her as his No. 2.

So what exactly do people mean when they say

That

Harris is sick

e

joked to step up in case something terrible happened to Biden?

She is already first in line for the presidency; she

has already

that job.

In the objections to Harris as a potential president, I hear echoes of the vague complaints that tormented Hillary Clinton, a former United States first lady, policymaker and senator, when she spoke out against Obama in 2008, and also a former secretary of the United States. States.

S

by the time she ran for president against Donald Trump in 2016:

I just don’t like her.

Why is that?

Well, some people consider Harris to be inauthentic or haughty. Some are annoyed by her tendency to laugh. Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal found it notoriously embarrassing that Harris danced in the rain in Jackson, Miss.

They knock on her for a lack of concrete achievements and describe her vice presidential record as disappointing. (But come on

now

; Biden first put her in charge of resolving the intractable humanitarian crisis on the southern border, and also leading the administrations for federal voting rights legislation, which clashed with the refusal of two Senate Democrats Joe Manchin III and

Kirsten Sinema

to support changing Senate rules.)

Anyway, experts declare Harris in trouble almost since the start of the Biden

a

administration. They have lazily settled on a story that is only loosely connected to reality.

The story goes something like this, veteran said

California

political journalist Dan Morain, author of the biography Kamala’s Way. She was chosen because she is a woman and a person of color, not because of her achievements, skills, intelligence or abilities. The story does not admit that she has any of those traits. Fox hosts come into play. As much as good liberals hate to admit it, the vile stuff gets into the air and bloodstream and infects their thinking. She is very intelligent. I’ve seen her campaign, in debates, press conferences and smaller gatherings, and she’s a talented politician.

The story gained new momentum last week, when Biden announced he would seek re-election, with Harris again as his running mate. Biden, already the oldest president in US history, would be 82 in his second inauguration.

Whoever the Republican candidate is wants to run against Kamala Harris, Morain said.

That is why the drumbeat of negativity is against her

only gets louder. has started.

It’s true that her low approval ratings have followed those of the president. As vice president, she has few concrete policy results to offer. And, of course, there’s still a bad taste left of her stunning fall from grace as a presidential frontrunner in 2020, when she may or may not have overseen a chaotic, underfunded campaign that foundered when she couldn’t decide on a strategy, or even a slogan.

But we cannot ignore the hurdles inherent in her identity. Regardless of how far this country has come in its views on race, regardless of the fact that we elected a black man as president in 2008 and 2012, only a fool would pretend that the presidential playing field is even for a biracial woman like Harris, and I do emphasize it

the word

woman.

After all, studies show that voters associate leadership with masculinity. No election office is more masculine than the presidency, according to the authors of a study reproduced in Political Parity, a website linked to the Rutgers University Center for American Women and Politics. The president, as commander in chief, is expected to embody manliness and display toughness.

difficult?

Who can not forget Harris’s performance during Brett M. Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court

to confirm

hearings when, as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, she looked at the stunned candidate and slowly and thoughtfully repeated her question: Can you think of laws that would give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?

Or, in 2018, when she grilled a recalcitrant then-Atty. General Jeff Sessions so loudly that he finally blurted out, “I can’t be rushed that easily, it makes me nervous.

Anyone questioning Harris’s toughness hasn’t been paying attention.

In 2020, it may have been true that Biden needed Harris to win, but not

to govern. In 2024, however, the pair will be harnessed like never before. It’s up to Biden to make sure Harris has a portfolio, especially on issues like abortion and black mothers’ health, that resonates with his constituents and hers, which raises her profile.

Think of it as the Biden/Harris paradox: While no president really wants to spend time pumping up his veep, Biden can help neutralize concerns about his age by showing Harris leadership chops.

And anyone can bear in mind that in many countries around the world, a female head of state is not a big cry.

@robinkabcarian