Up close and personal With Harris, the mood is convivial and the charisma factor is high

The View, America's most popular daytime talkshow, was on commercial break. Kamala Harris sat writing absence notes for students who were missing class to attend the live broadcast. "Is it just today, right?" the vice president laughed.

- David Smith

She handed over the letters written on notepaper headed "The Vice President". One said: "Dear teacher, please excuse Dani from class today. She was hanging out with us. Best and thank you for being an educator. Kamala."

It was an unscripted moment that the studio audience loved but TV viewers wouldn't see. Harris, running the shortest presidential campaign in modern US history after being unexpectedly plunged into the contest when Joe Biden dropped out, is exploring ways to reveal herself to a wary nation.

Still a relatively unknown quantity, the former California attorney general and US senator is trying to make the electorate feel comfortable about the prospect of President Harris.

In less than three months Harris has raised a record-breaking billion dollars. She has tried to put daylight between herself and the unpopular incumbent figure of Biden, and turn the election into a referendum on her opponent, former US president Donald Trump.

The vice-president has sought to bring positive vibes to a country that seems to have anxiety in its bones. She has set out to persuade the US to do something that it has never done before in its 248-year existence: elect a woman to the White House - and a woman of color to boot.

Harris has done it while carrying the burden of the hopes of millions in the US and beyond who fear that the return of Trump to the White House would herald a new dark age for American democracy and the planet. Opinion polls suggest the race is a dead heat.

This week the Guardian joined her for three days on the campaign trail, flying hundreds of miles across the country on Air Force Two, trailing her convoy as it halted traffic in Manhattan and questioning her at two off-the-record meetings with journalists.