It's Biden vs Harris in the war raging in the West Wing

Washington is ablaze with talk of the President’s fractious relationship with his deputy. As policies stall, inflation soars and they both tank in the polls, Oliver Wiseman asks if they can last

- Oliver Wiseman

JOHN NANCE GARNER, vice-pres-ident to FDR, famously described the job as “about as useful as a bucket of warm piss”. As if to prove the point, Garner isn’t remembered for much beyond than that line.

Kamala Harris looms larger than most vice-presidents, not least because her status as the first woman and first nonwhite American to do the job has given her outsized prominence. But a year after electoral triumph, with plummeting personal polling numbers and amid reports of a deterioration in relations between Joe Biden’s team and hers, Harris will surely be tempted to agree with Garner’s crude characterisation.

A recent survey put her approval rating at just 28 per cent, 10 points below her boss and a dire level of popularity for a politician in her position. Meanwhile, unnamed West Wing aides and advisors have complained about entrenched dysfunction and a lack of focus in the vice-president’s office. The sniping runs both directions, with Harris loyalists claiming she is too constrained by Biden. In some ways, the apparent deterioration in Biden-Harris relations is unsurprising. Even when things are going well, the West Wing is a pressure cooker. When the going gets tough, finger-pointing and bad-blooded infighting is all but inevitable. The Biden presidency got off to a sure-footed start but has come crashing down to earth in recent months.