Kate Andersen Brower has interviewed Trump, Obama, Biden and many others in her time covering the White House. Now the CNN contributor and NY Times best-selling author reveals how Kamala will operate
Joe Biden faces the most dire circumstances since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inauguration in 1933 when the Great Depression ravaged the United States. In his inaugural speech FDR outlined the “New Deal,” his plan to lead the nation into a new day. With the pandemic raging Biden will do the same thing: Offer a message of competence and hope and a plan ahead. Except Biden will be leading with the most powerful woman in the history of the executive branch standing by his side.
Harris served as a senator and attorney general from California and she will not be shy about using one of her only tangible powers as vice president: She has said that she will break tie votes in the Senate (the Senate is split 50-50). In a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed on January 18 she wrote, “Since our nation’s founding, only 268 tie-breaking votes have been cast by a Vice President. I intend to work tirelessly as your Vice President, including, if necessary, fulfilling this Constitutional duty,” she wrote. “At the same time, it is my hope that rather than come to the point of a tie, the Senate will instead find common ground and do the work of the American people.”
Undoing Trump’s carnage
On Inauguration Day there will be no throngs of exuberant Americans huddled on the National Mall to cheer on Biden and Harris’s historic election. There were half-a-million people in Washington for the Women’s March in support of gender equality on President Trump’s first full day in office. There would surely be at least that many people there on Inauguration Day to celebrate Biden and the election of the first woman and the first person of colour to be elected to the role. But the pandemic has robbed us of that.
Political correspondent and author: Kate Andersen Brower
We know that the Biden administration will be wasting no time undoing Donald Trump’s agenda, including ending the travel ban on several mostly Muslim countries, rejoining the Paris climate change accord, and reuniting children who were separated from their families at the border.
And because Biden, 77, knows the vice presidency better than any sitting president since George H.W. Bush, who was Ronald Reagan’s VP, he will be turning to Harris, 56, as a true teammate. She has already played a very visible role. We have seen Harris at most of Biden’s televised events in Wilmington, Delaware, where he announced nominees and other senior staff selections during the transition.
Committed to women’s issues
When I interviewed Biden for my book First in Line: Presidents, Vice Presidents, and the Pursuit of Power, he said he wanted to “be involved in everything” when he was vice president. He said he wanted to literally be the last person in the room when President Barack Obama was facing difficult decisions. Harris clearly wants to play a key role in decision-making too and part of her strength will be offering her perspective.
“What I will do, which is what Joe wants me to do, is share my lived experience to any issue that we confront,” she said in a 60 Minutes interview, as “a Black child in America, who was also a prosecutor, who also has a mother who arrived here at the age of 19 from India.”
The dawn of a new era (Unsplash)
We know that Harris is committed to women’s issues. The top three aides in her office are all women, the first time that has ever happened in the VP’s office. Biden’s press team is made up of women and this administration has vowed to create a White House “that looks like America.”
She is more liberal – and more in line with progressive activists – than Biden and she has expressed support for legalizing marijuana on a national level, the Green New Deal, and Medicare for All, which she co-sponsored in the same-named 2017 act with Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Holding Biden accountable
When she was a senator Harris got a perfect score from NARAL, an abortion rights group. As states began to severely limit access to abortions during the last four years, Harris confronted Biden during the Democratic primaries about his support for the Hyde Amendment which ended federal funding for abortion. The amendment has especially affected women who rely on Medicaid, a programme for low-income Americans, and women of colour.
“On the Hyde Amendment, vice president, where you made a decision for years to withhold resources to poor women to have access to reproductive health care, including women who were the victims of rape and incest, do you now say that you have evolved and you regret that?” she asked. “Only since you’ve been running for president this time, said that you in some way would take that back or you didn’t agree with that decision you made over many, many years and this directly impacted so many women in our country.”
She spoke her mind again when Brett Kavanaugh was being questioned during hearings before his appointment to the Supreme Court in 2018. At the hearing Harris was one of the most effective interrogators.
“Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the male body?” she asked. After a few seconds he said, “I’m not thinking of any right now, Senator.”
The future is female
Undoubtedly, there will be times over the next four years when Harris, like Biden, will face many weighty decisions. She may have to sacrifice some ideals in order to make Biden look good, was ever thus the job of a vice president. But Harris has a long political career ahead of her. Maybe, the work she does in this new administration, will see her winning a promotion in the next.
* Kate Andersen Brower is a CNN contributor and the author of First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies, Team Of Five: The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump, First in Line: Presidents, Vice Presidents and the Pursuit of Power, and The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House. Her most recent book is for children, Exploring the White House: Inside America’s Most Famous Home. She is a CNN contributor who covered the Obama White House for Bloomberg News and is a former CBS News staffer and Fox News producer. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and the Washington Post. Her book The Residence has been optioned by Shonda Rhimes for Netflix.
The post Washington insider Kate Andersen Brower on Kamala Harris: 'Her voice will be key to a new era' appeared first on Marie Claire.
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