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.
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