By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) August 20, 2020

SILVER SPRING—This piece is going to be less about research and facts and more just personal reflection, but quite analytical still.  So let us dive in.

Harris the Senator and Candidate: Not Her Best Self

As I noted before in one recent piece, I thought Kamala Harris had an impressive resume but that Susan Rice’s resume was far more impressive vice presidentially and that it was not even close.

I stand by that analysis.

After I wrote that piece, I began writing another looking at personality and other intangible aspects to rate both Rice and Harris as candidates.  I had gotten through half of what I had originally planned, finishing the part on first impressions, when it was announced that Harris was the pick.  I was slightly surprised, and then began thinking more and more about(now-) Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden picking her, and what that meant.  I had laid out earlier serious concerns about who Harris was as a person and how she chose to present and conduct herself in key moments in her career public career as a senator.  Biden’s picking her did not mean that my concerns were invalid, but it did mean that he has thought of them, spoken with and vetted her, and left confident that her positives outweighed, by far, those concerns.

So, as I wrote my conclusion to that last piece, I decided to look at her in a new light.  And I had realized, in that white-and-male dominated rat-race of politics, Kamala understandably felt a tremendous amount of pressure as a woman of color.  New to a gridlocked Senate and not able to pass any of her legislation, she focused, instead, on trying to create viral moments much like Warren’s “Nevertheless, she persisted” moment, as I detailed in my last piece and for which SNL satirized her.

Since I mentioned the NBA basketball documentary The Last Dance in my previous pieces, I will compare some of these moves to Reggie Miller initiating contact, expertly, and getting an offensive foul called on a defender: a cheap but very effective ploy.  I admit, without such moments, it would have been hard for her to get attention and distinguish herself in a gridlocked senate.  But as someone who was an athlete in high school and a huge Kicks fan, I hate Reggie Miller and cheap, fake play like that.  I just do not like those kinds of cheap, media-driven moves, but hey, my purist style is probably not opportunistic enough for a freshman junior senator trying to run for president; I understand the politics behind such plays and can appreciate it as an effective tactic (just look at Reggie), but I do not have to like it, as I mentioned in my last piece.

Well, Harris and her campaign doubled down on this kind of conduct in 2019 in the presidential campaign and debates, most notably in cheap shots against Biden and Warren (the latter really backfiring but both probably souring her with Democrats who do not like seeing their beloved figures suffer from friendly fire that is unfair; it did not work for Sec. Julían Castro, either, for the record) and even Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who ripped her apart on her criminal justice record.  Now, I cannot stand fringe-y, wacky Tulsi Gabbard (though I respect her military service), but the way in which Harris did not really defend her record but, instead, punched down at Gabbard in response—as if Gabbard was simply beneath her—was also not impressive to me and rubbed me very much the wrong way.

But I am a policy wonk who likes fair, accurate, collegial (when within the Party, at least) campaigning and avoiding the cheap shots, taking the high road.  And, in the end, my guy with that style won and got the nomination.  Still, at the time, Biden saw what I did not: a tough, aggressive rival whose fire could be turned effectively against the GOP in a general election, who could competently deflect away from things she did not want to answer, and would be a good complement for a guy who is too open and says too much about his vulnerabilities, is too candid.  In other words, she could be different and was in ways that would enhance the ticket as a number two far beyond just being younger, a woman, and a person of color.

I also knew she had a friendship with Beau Biden, the heroic, accomplished son of Joe’s who succumbed to cancer in 2015.  What I did not know was how close Kamala was with Beau, and that this closeness helped create an authentic relationship between Joe and Kamala.  But that relationship between Joe and Kamala just did not come out on the campaign trail in 2019, not on TV and certainly not at the debates.  Harris was going to put her friendship with Biden aside and play aggressively to win by going after Joe and letting Joe defend himself rather than take chances to defend him, too, even with the Hunter Biden, Ukraine,  and Burisma smears.  This was at a time when it was very possible (especially if Harris had run a very different campaign) for Harris to put herself in a position to overtake Biden in ways that were never realistic other candidates.  Again, I do not have to like it, but, at the same time, Harris had a real shot, she felt that would work, and negative cheap-shot campaigning is far from the most insane tactic from a rationalist perspective; sometimes, politics really is House of Cards.  I can respect that as a candidate choice even if I do not like it.  It just did not work, thanks to Democratic primary voters and in spite of biased mainstream media coverage and because.  And, thankfully for me as a Biden supporter, this was in part because Harris ran an overall terrible campaign.  The opportunity to build enough support passed for Harris, she saw the writing on the wall, and, like Joe Biden in his 1988 election cycle presidential campaign dropping out in late 1987, dropped out even before 2020 began.

Biden Picks Harris for the Real Kamala

But Biden was clearly impressed with Harris’s grit, and, from the personal relationship few knew they had, he knew things most Americans did not know about her: her warm, thoughtful, unrehearsed, tender, compassionate, funny, fun, likable (dare I say humble?) side.  While a large portion of Harris’s major public displays since becoming a senator were calculated, shallow, and not highlighting in deep, substantive ways her impressive, substantive record, Joe knew the real Kamala when she was not trying too hard, not so desperate to distinguish herself in an ineffective Senate and a crowded debate stage.

So it was that I began to think that he must know her in ways I did not, and gave Biden the benefit of the doubt in picking her and, thus, gave her the benefit of the doubt.  If Biden could be big in putting aside Harris’s cheap attacks, trusting that what he saw in her was greater than my less-familiar impressions, even if they were consistent, I could put those attacks aside too (“All’s fair in love and war and politics too??” [meh]).  I began to get excited about the speech she would give the next day as I was writing my conclusion to my second Harris piece, and the moment that was put out on social media, when she was delighted, surprised, and humbled when Biden offered her the VP slot, was a different side of her, what I felt must be the real Kamala, what it seems she had in some ways been hiding from me and many others who did not know her better.  The person she thought would work politically may not have, but I could not wait to see her the next day give her first speech as Joe’s VP selection.

But even before then, I began to realize where I had been wrong in other ways.  Rice easily had the best resume, and I care little for flash, for theatrical performance, for how “cool” or smooth someone was when weighed against policy chops, expertise, and experience.  But guess what: there are very few voters like me, and most voters will pick the “cool” telegenic candidate over Albert Einstein himself.  And I realized, that, politically, sacrificing some substance and experience for a person who has exceptional poise, stage presence, and charisma (even when Harris is falling flat, you see glimpses of that, and I had seen a few far better moments here and there) but who still has a relatively impressive resume is the best fit politically, especially for such a crisis moment that amounts either the survival or death of our democracy, as former President President Barack Obama himself made terrifyingly clear last night.

Basically, I put too much stock on experience and expertise (Rice) and not enough on optics and performance.  If we had three grades for each candidate—substance, style, and baggage—Harris would be score higher than rice; even if her substance score was not nearly as high as Rice’s, her style score—when Harris is at her best—was incredibly high and she has far less baggage that can hurt.  And it is not that Rice is not also a great personality, it is simply that Harris is one of those rare top-tier-with-very-few peers-level-of-charisma people.  I think Rice could have won Americans over, but she also has the whole Benghazi and unmasking “baggage,” which, though totally nonsense and made-up smears obviously concocted by Republicans, still would have admittedly stuck and dogged a Biden-Rice campaign throughout the election (just ask Hillary Clinton how damaging false smears can be!).  So Rice, though more substantive, had more risks whereas Harris was relatively lower-risk, higher political reward, still strong substantively, and did not have any of that Benghazi-Clinton-Obama Administration baggage; Rice was an old Washington Hand (which I loved) but Harris was fresh, new, and exiting (which pretty much everyone else loved).  I did not consider politics enough (though a VP is mainly needed as a governing partner) and, especially for campaigning in the coronavirus era, did not consider enough the ability to produce energetic, viral clips nearly enough.  As a policy wonk, I needed to remember that wonks are a political constituency that amounts to the negligible and recognize the importance of mass appeal to a public that generally will not care as much about someone being an Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs or a peacekeeping specialist on the National Security Council as they will about sheer star power.

In short, I was wrong to favor Rice over Harris if you take politics, not just resumes, into account.

Kamala’s Real Self Is Her Best self

And yet, that was Harris’s fault, because of the way she campaigned and presented herself since becoming a senator in key moments when she had the most exposure.

So when Harris was formally introduced to speak as Joe’s VP pick by Joe himself, when I saw the real Kamala Harris, a.k.a. Mamala, when I saw the emotion and tenderness with which she spoke about her relationship with Beau and how Beau was the one who really made her understand what made Joe Biden so special, when I saw how deeply she respected Joe and appreciated Joe, when I saw her warmth and grace in a setting where she did not have to fight to be remembered on a stage with about ten other people, when I saw the grace, dignity, and humility with which she accepted this honor, and when I saw the measured but more natural version of the fierce prosecutor, indicting Trump not in a soundbite but in but methodical, righteous detail, with measured yet genuine anger and scorn that felt organic and not staged, I was fully on board with Team Kamala.

Biden’s pick of her brough me over to her in my head, but Kamala herself won over my heart when I got to see the real her in this first real speech by her as Joe’s running mate.  Joe had picked the most magnetic and charismatic person available from the entire pool of presidential candidates and other VP hopefuls, and, apart from Rice, the person with the best resume among all of the mentioned VP contenders: in other words, the best VP candidate possible for this moment, especially at a time of great reckoning and awakening and tragedy, when someone not a woman of color would have affected enthusiasm among some key voting blocks, especially younger voters of all colors, whose level of cynicism and disaffection may be what determines the outcome of this election (if it is voting that will determine it and not voter suppression or Russian interference).

Harris and Biden: A New Hope Bringing Out the Best in Each Other

To be clear, I am (cautiously) optimistic Biden can and will win by a lot (though I am also filled with dread, but more on that another time), and I think no matter his VP selection, this would be the case as long as it was not someone too far-left for most Americans, like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren (sorry Bernie and Liz fans, that’s political reality, but thanks to both senators for such solid support for Biden!), so I do not buy what some of the punditry—especially, understandably, those so strongly identifying with and seeing themselves in Harris—are saying along the lines of Biden “needing” Harris,” or that the man perhaps most steeped in policy of any major-party nominee in American history “needed” her on any particular issue or with any particular demographic.

But I strongly believe Harris is a major win-win even allowing for stupid racists and misogynists, that Harris adds a lot to Biden’s team, that her different perspective as the last second-opinion in the room will be good and valuable to Biden much like one way Obama found Biden so valuable, and am thrilled—even ecstatic—that she will be by his side during the campaign and, we should all hope, in the White House.

To be clear, I though her speech when Biden introduced her was perfect.  Literally perfect.  As was her speech accepting the Vice-Presidential nomination, and with that first speech, I was an enthusiastically on board with Team Kamala.  Harris, freed of the inane pressure of having just a few minutes to shine, showed her real self, the one Joe loves and Beau Biden loved, the one I had only seen glimpses of, in its full glory.  This side of Harris reminded me, too, why I love Biden, for he chose so wisely and so well: Harris is no black-Indian Palin, so, she is a singularity in this election cycle when freed to be herself by herself and the format.  She will demolish Vice President Mike Pence one-on-one and electrify the campaign trail like Palin did for (the now late) Sen. John McCain, though not with crass appeal to racists and xenophobes, but with grace and substance, hope and accountability.

I had serious issues with Harris.  I was offended by how she conducted herself, and though I respected her talent and accomplishments, I just was not feeling her.  I also had issues with her record.  But Joe’s faith in Harris as demonstrated by his picking her and Kamala’s own since her selection—her conduct in rising decidedly to the occasion—made me realize who the real Kamala Harris was I was sold.  Even on policy, as Peter Beinart persuasively argues in The Atlantic, as a trailblazing black-Indian-American woman trying to win statewide office California, she more or less did what she had to do.

So now?  Call me a Kamala Convert.

Kamala—Senator Harris—thank you for showing me and so many others your real-self.  Joe is so smart to have picked you and so lucky to have you by his side.  The Democratic Party may very well have found its next Obama, and America may have found the perfect teammate for Biden to both beat Trump and Pence like a drum out of the White house and save America, democracy, and the world from Donald Trump’s insanity, tribalism, and a rising fascism, as a Democratic Party Batman and Robin: Joe as Batman and Kamala as a much cooler-than-normal, way-more-stylish Robin.  They are the superhero duo we need now, and let me be an example of how one of Harris’s superpowers is winning over serious doubters to become fervent supporters.

See related previous articles: Substance vs. Style as Biden Picks Harris over Rice and Based on Experience, Susan Rice Is Easily—by Far—the Best Choice for VP for Biden (Sorry Harris Fans, that Includes Kamala)

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) August 11, 2020 (see related articles: August 20, 2020: I Was Wrong about Harris. Why I Changed My Mind and How She Won Me Over and August 8, 2020: Based on Experience, Susan Rice Is Easily—by Far—the Best Choice for VP for Biden (Sorry Harris Fans, that Includes Kamala))

WASHINGTON and SILVER SPRING—In my earlier recent piece comparing the careers of California Senator Kamala Harris and former Obama Administration National Security Advisor and United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, I noted that I have been watching and really enjoying ESPN’s The Last Dance (the documentary series about Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls’s championship teams, especially their final championship run).  I noted that there are two main facets as to how a player gets selected for a team and how they perform: the first facet is the stats: the numbers that would be a on a player’s trading card; that is what I looked at in that last piece as far as Harris and Rice.  In this piece, I want to look at some of the intangibles, the second facet: the stuff that you would not get by looking at a trading card, but which speak more to personality and traits that are more about how you operate or fit on a team in ways that numbers cannot display.  And a lot of these intangibles can come across in informed first impressions voters get from seeing each for the first time.

First Impressions

I will begin first by just explaining how I remember being introduced and familiar with both Rice and Harris.

Rice

With Rice, I do not really remember anything specific.  I did not watch or read a lot of news in the 1990s in middle school or high school.  I was super busy in both: lots of activities (music, sports) and taking advanced classes throughout.  I also went to a fairly strict boarding school for high school (shout out to Canterbury), where TV-watching was quite limited (and when we had freedom to watch TV in the common room, it was usually sports and MTV that the other kids had on; I never, ever recall seeing the news on in the dorms.  If I had put the news on, I probably would have been physically driven out of the dorms) and where I was busy enough that I did not get to read the news too often, either.

I still followed politics a bit somehow in high school, but I can say that I have no recollection that I ever heard of or even saw Susan Rice when she was with the Clinton Administration or in the time that followed before she was with the Obama campaign.  I do not have any recollection of becoming aware of her existence during the 2008 election either, though perhaps I saw her on TV or read an article or few that mentioned her.  I do know that I became aware of her as our Ambassador to the United Nations.  I recall nothing specific between the first term and the Benghazi “scandal,” other than a few times she would have been speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the UN and I am sure I saw her other times in clips of other UN deliberations as well as press conferences, interviews, and in articles.  Each time, I remember seeing her calm, composed, knowledgeable, competent, sharp, and articulate, a solid representation of America to the world and a competent National Security Advisor, one of the only black women in American history to reach such heights in government and on the world stage representing America.  Until recently, I only had a vague—I had never digested her in depth or at length—but strongly positive impression of her, with no complaints that I can recollect; this was, in part, because I researched the Benghazi situation deeply in advance of Clinton’s marathon Congressional testimony of October, 2015, and realized that entire case against Hillary Clinton (and, by default, Susan Rice) in terms of the Benghazi fiasco, was, as I noted at the time, a cynical, disgusting, disingenuous, dishonest, witch hunt-like, purely political attempt to damage Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration before the 2016 election (check out my in-depth article examining this hearing for a dismantling of all the specious, misleading, and/or untruthful arguments put out by Republicans).  The first experience I ever had that really focused on Rice was watching while working out in the fall of 2019 an interview of her by Walter Isaacson for Amanpour and Company on the event of the release of her memoir.  I was incredibly impressed with her, and have since paid more attention to her and her interviews and tweets since her book tour started, and her public interactions have consistently been at a level that keeps impressing me at a very high level.

Harris

When it came to Harris, my introduction to her was very much at a time when I was glued into politics as a freelance reporter who was then focusing much more on American politics than I had previously, and, she was also being built up as a star; for these reasons, I ended up paying way more attention to her when I first came across her than I did with Rice.  I was still living in the Middle East, but had found, most disappointingly and quite sadly, that Trump and the U.S. election cycle giving me much more opportunity and paid way better than covering Syrian refugees, ISIS, Iraq, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  I had been closely following the whole Trump-Russia saga, in particular, since July, 2016.  Thus, when there was a highly-anticipated hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee with key figures from the intelligence and law enforcement community, including Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who had only weeks earlier appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia, Russian election interference, and any possible collusion between people around Trump with the Russian government or its intermediaries, I was highly interested. 

One of the Democratic senators taking part in the hearing was the newly-elected Kamala Harris from California.  Her win in 2016 was certainly met with some excitement, the second black woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate and the first South-Asian (her father was black and her mother was Indian).

Full disclosure: I grew up near New York, and we East Coasters pay little attention to California politics.  So, I barely paid attention to her in the 2016 campaign, which was an extremely busy time for me when I was trying to cover the primaries and Clinton vs. Trump.  Thus, I was pretty excited about this hearing: in many ways, it would be Harris’s biggest stage yet, her introduction to the national scene, and it was certainly her introduction to me.  I remember hearing a lot of hype about how she could be the next Obama, presidential material, and the future of the party, so I was expecting to be mightily impressed and looking forward to seeing one of our brightest new stars of my left on the national stage in action.

Now, full disclosure: before you read my take on what transpired, you should know I watched the entire hearing live and closely (full video and transcript).  I was deeply interested in all the proceedings and was at least somewhat, sometimes very, familiar with the issues being discussed.  And I have to say that from the very beginning of her allotted time (video beginning with that here) during the hearing, I was shocked at how obnoxious, grating, and disappointing I found her performance to be.  From the very beginning, she was rude and grandstandy, first very briefly to Admiral Mike Rogers, cutting him off after asking him a question so that he asked, respectfully, “Senator, if you could, could I get to respond, please, ma’am?” He then tried to continue but she interrupted him again.  “No, sir. No, no.”

It looked like Harris was going to act like a Big Name prosecutor taking on a Hostile Witness, and almost immediately, she switched to question Rosenstein with the bulk of her time, confirming this impression with him, too.  She constantly interrupted him and cut him off, was rude and hostile, not yelling and haranguing like maniac and staunch Trump apparatchik Jim Jordan might in the House, not even raising her voice to the less-annoying-than-Jim Jordan-level of Republican Ted Cruz in the saucer-cooling Senate, but still clearly determined to stand out, show that she was being “tough,” demonstrate her stern courtroom prosecutorial demeanor, and make a name for herself with a figure like Rosenstein very much in the headlines.  And her whole premise was to act like she was leading an effort to protect Mueller from Trump Administration interference or from even being sacked to protect the president, citing a precedent where a previous Attorney General (AG) overseeing an independent, specially-appointed inquiry had pledged in writing to respect the independence of the investigation.  But in that case, the appointed head of the inquiry was a sitting U.S. Attorney that could be fired by the president, so there was a potential conflict in that he normally reported as a Department of Justice employee to the AG and served at the pleasure of the president.  In this case, Mueller was a retired and private citizen who was not part of the Department of Justice and did not have that conflict or reporting issues and could not be fired by the president and under law could only be fired under special, non-political, non-arbitrary circumstances by the top Department of Justice official overseeing the investigation (Rosenstein, because AG Jeff Sessions had recused himself).   Between that and the regulations of the particular law governing Mueller’s appointment—regulations that that did not apply to the precedent Harris was citing—Harris’s point was moot and so were her attempts to get Rosenstein, in a quite a badgering (do not worry, I apply that term often for male congressman) and hostile manner, to commit to a statement in writing like the one she cited earlier but that did not apply under circumstances that were quite different in relation to Harris’s line of questioning.

Rosenstein was very respectfully trying to explain this to Harris, but Harris repeatedly cut him off and continued to demand a simple answer to a complex question.  Sen. John McCain, who stood up more to Trump and Republican malfeasance and better than any other Republican senator during the Trump Administration, came to the rescue of Rosenstein, asking for Harris to stop interrupting the witness and to let him answer the question.  The Republican Chairman of the Committee, Senator Richard Burr, would join in, stopping Harris after she challenged even Burr him from repeating the same question in a hostile manner and permitting Rosenstein to make the above explanation about why a simple “yes” or “no” did not as answer given the different circumstances.

And by hostile, I mean hostile; again, I watched the entire over two-and-a-half-hours-long hearing, and nobody else acted in any way near the manner of Harris.  Only her’; everyone else—Democrat and Republican alike—was polite to the witnesses, did not repeatedly cut them off, used a respectful, non-badgering tone, and did not feel the need to be adversarial even though they found a great many things to be frustrating and concerning, but Harris adopted this adversarial tone from her very first question to the admiral and continued using it until her time was up.

There are two other reasons why this is incredibly obnoxious: despite pressure from the president to stop Mueller, Rosenstein had defended Mueller’s probe (it was Rosenstein who became alarmed enough at Trump’s behavior that he was the one who decided to appoint a special counsel to investigate Trump, and it was also Rosenstein he who chose Mueller) and had given Mueller a lot of freedom, independence, and support.  Rosenstein is far from perfect and has had some problematic aspects of his time as Deputy AG ands since, but at this point he has been very much on the right side by deciding to appoint a special counsel, Mueller, and working to keep the integrity of Mueller’s investigation secure amidst considerable pressure to compromise it by Trump, Republicans, and right-wing media.  The other reason this is incredibly obnoxious is that I am certain Kamala Harris knew the law (she is an accomplished prosecutor and served as California’s Attorney General) and knew that her point was largely moot, not appropriate, and not fair to Rosenstein.  But she was determined to establish herself as a tough newcomer, to get attention, to rise above all her peers during her first major public hearing.  She was trying to trap both the admiral and especially Rosenstein into “gotchya” questions, embarrassing them and pushing them into a seemingly hypocritical trap to make the witness look like he hiding something unnecessarily in the case of the admiral and that he was not willing to stand up for the independence and integrity of the Mueller probe in the case of Rosenstein (which by all accounts up to that point and many beyond, he had).  So Harris knew she did not need to be overly concerned over Rosenstein at that point; she knew her clever attempt to prosecutorally box Rosenstein in like he was a defendant on the witness stand back in California was not getting at the heart of any major issues with the Mueller probe, knew that her actions were designed to generate a soundbite that would hopefully go viral, and knew she was engaging in self-promotion that was a subtle attack on the integrity of both Rosenstein and Admiral Rogers over a moot point, designed to make her look like she was a tough prosecutor who was taking a version of Law and Order to Washington.  In an otherwise cordial hearing, her contentious exchanges would stand out and get her attention in a situation where most junior senators would not behave this way.  You could smell presidential aspirations on her from a mile away.  And if you think I am making this up, this is exactly how Maya Rudolph satirized Harris on Saturday Night Live: always looking to create a media moment that would go viral on the internet, designed to get her attention and often show her as a tough ready-for-primetime prosecutor, regardless of the level of substance behind what she was saying.

Yep, that was my introduction to Harris: a woman clearly of great intellect, substance, and capability that chose to engage in grandstanding devoid of substance, misleading but guaranteed to get headlines.

I was deeply saddened; is this what the internet was doing to us, hollowing out our politics to be mostly hot air?  Was Harris going to use her office to be an effective legislator or focus on promoting herself in the media and on using her office to prepare a presidential run?  Would we be elevating the likes of Bernie Sanders whose “plans” were never in the realm of reality and whose central narratives and premises justifying his campaign were crafted on fantasy, thus pretty much dooming his campaign?  Were capable women of substance going to choose to play for meme and viral moments, hoping to base their campaigns on social media likes and shares?  Were these folks really going to be the future of the Party?

But the next day, it would get even worse, as Harris tried to capitalize on her events from the day before in an even more blatantly cynical attempt to create a viral, slogan-ready moment.  Because she had been interrupted by McCain and Burr—two men, two white men—there was an opportunity to frame their actions as sexist or even racist.  One thing is for certain: Warren’s viral “Nevertheless, she persisted” moment form just a few months earlier—when Republican male Senate colleagues had silenced Warren with a rarely used technicality regarding actions that “impute” fellow senators directly—was very much on Harris’s mind, and she clearly wanted to recreate that, especially the vibe of a woman standing up to powerful men.  It was almost like she could see Warren (whom I have been fairly critical of for various reasons) getting an edge over here for 2020 and she wanted to respond, and while Warren’s moment seemed relatively authentic, this would have a feel of being manufactured.  Harris’s plan was already implemented within two days of the hearing, with Harris was advertising stickers on Facebook with the words “courage not courtesy” you could get on her website—not on her Senate site, but kamalaharris.org (translation: she’s running.  Already.  In June, 2017).

Now, first off, there is a tremendous amount of sexism in the world, in America, in politics, in the Senate.  Of that, there is no doubt among rational, informed people.  And to be fair to Harris, it was smart politics.  Gimmicky as hell?  Cringingly forced and inauthentic?  Sure.  But definitely effective: most voters would not have watched the hearing.  Some—many—will have seen the clips of Harris and taken the image of her she wanted them to; most certainly would not have known much about Rosenstein or the special counsel regulations, and she was betting on that.  She had created her viral moment, though it would pale in impact and reach to Warren’s, and, I suspect, fell far short of what she was hoping, but it certainly got the attention of the media, some outlets of which tried to make it a sequel to Warren’s big moment.

I have watched Harris plenty of times since then, and, at least until the 2020 campaign—another story possibly for another time—most of her performances were much better that what I saw at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.  I would be wrong if I did not admit that this first major impression she made was strong, and that it made me more likely to read calculated political gamesmanship into some of her actions—I would say fairly—but that did not stop me from seeing her as capable, formidable, one of the top rising stars on the left, and a top-tier contender for the 2020 nomination, one of the few I thought that could compete with Biden if he was to run.

Yet still, once of the reasons I love Biden is his authenticity and positioning of substance front and center throughout his career.  As for “courage not courtesy,” just ugh.  I have written about the devolution of our politics for years and it has been happening for years, but once thing that was fairly consistent for some time was that, unlike the more unruly House, the Senate was supposed to be an elevated form of politics less prone to theatrics, more prone to comity, civility, cooperation, and compromise, with less heated rhetoric and more substantive deliberations, more removed from the passions and the whims of the masses.  There is an old, unsubstantiated tradition that Washington told Jefferson that the Senate was like a “saucer” that could allow “our legislation to cool.”  In the words of James Madison in Federalist “No. 62,” the Senate would be less “subject to the infection of violent passions, or to the danger of combining in pursuit of unjust measures” than the House.  But these days, this distinction is decidedly weakened and weakening, and I am not for that.  Today is all about “populists” on both sides smashing tradition and norms and going around institutions and political colleagues “directly to the people,” whatever that means.  Think Bernie Sanders’s mobilizing millions of people to take to the streets as a governing philosophy.  Far worse, think about Trump’s calls on his supporters to take to the streets if things do not go well for him.  Harris’s theatrics were by far nowhere near the worst I have seen in the Senate, not even close to second worst (Hello, Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton!), but they were another step in a decline that seriously worried me.  And Harris, clearly, cared little for such tradition if she felt she could blaze a trail for her advancement.

A reasonable case can be made that this is what is needed at this time, that Harris’s calculation is what is needed against the Republican and Trumpian threat.  I thought to myself, Harris might have what it takes to win in the Internet/Twitter age, perhaps even what is needed to take on Trump, and she would have my support against him, but I do not have to like it.  I do not have to like how she treated DAG Rosenstein and Admiral Rogers.  I not have to like the premeditation to stand out tonally in a setting when it just was not at all necessary.  I do not have to like the calculated attempt to prepare sloganeering stickers within days.

But that does not mean I can not like or support Harris.

Rooting for (vice presidential nominee) Harris’s Best Self

As I write this conclusion, news is breaking that Biden has picked Harris.  My preference would definitely have been for Susan Rice.  But I point out these issues I have with Harris (before or after her being picked) not to denigrate her, not to turn people against her.  Harris if anything responds to the atmosphere in the moment.  She could very likely be our next vice president.  She would have my support as VP and should have all our support, has mine as a candidate for VP, and deserves our respect for earning this pick on the part of Biden.

To an extent, some of the concerns I have about Harris are mollified by Biden’s confidence in her in selecting her.  At the same time, I am still publishing this not just because I had written most of it before the pick was announced, but because I hope these concerns I have will be shared by others in a way where we push Harris to be her best self, not the disappointing campaigner we saw in 2019 and much better than the performance I saw in the hearing from 2017 I discussed above.

I have 100% confidence that Harris is more than capable of taking the higher road.  Even though I argued recently that Rice had better experience to be a VP, Harris’s experience is still impressive and contains much substance, much to be proud of, and she is both a safer and probably a better bet politically.  It is a sad testament to our current politics that a woman of color so accomplished and so talented would feel the need to play to internet/meme culture so strongly, though Peter Beinart makes a good case defending her in The Atlantic that, like Obama, as a black trailblazer in politics she has had to play it safer, in that article’s case, with her actions on criminal justice in California, actions which have been heavily criticized.  I hope, now that she has bested all but one man to be the second survivor of the Democratic primaries, that she will feel less pressure, feel more freedom, and feel confident enough in her selection by Biden to run more on substance and less on style and seeking viral moments (not that those do not help, but that is my preference as one of her supporters and one who wants to see our politics reelevated).  I hope that, if Biden wins, she can learn from someone like Susan Rice on foreign and security policy, follow Biden’s lead, be a great governing partner, and set herself up to be an amazing president of her own years down the road. 

And that is in part up to us:  it is no longer the Democratic primaries, and a much more moderate, national crowd is her audience; as her supporters or on-the-fence-voters, it is, in part, up to us to telegraph what we want from her, so lets us demand her very best, not clamor for internet gimmicks and viral videos.  I know that my complaints here were mostly about her style and how she operated, but these “little” things, the way you pursue your goals, the norms you respect and those you break, the tenor and tone you set, set all matter… just look at Trump!

Even as I am writing this conclusion, my emotions changed a bit.  Even as someone who was rooting for Susan Rice, I am happy and pleased with Harris (whom I saw as a much better-qualified candidate than Warren, both for president and vice president), and I am genuinely proud of Harris and of her selection by my candidate Joe Biden and my Democratic Party, the historic first woman of color on a major party ticket.  It is sad because of our insane coronavirus pandemic response that we cannot have a live event with a huge crowd welcoming Kamala Harris on stage with Joe Biden: both deserved that, especially Harris.  But that lost moment is the least of the slights and challenges Harris will face going forward.  I am now rooting for Harris, and confident she can help Biden win and govern.  She is immeasurably better than Vice President Pence and even more so (obviously) than President Donald Trump.

The pressure is on, but I hope and am confident that Senator Kamala Harris will rise to the occasion.  We, the people behind her, can help by pushing to keep substance front and center in a campaign that will contain a historic amount of nonsense from Trump, Republicans, the right-wing media, and the Russians.  But together and, yes, with Kamala Harris’s help, we can ensure that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are sworn in on January 20^th, 2021.

See related previous article: Based on Experience, Susan Rice Is Easily—by Far—the Best Choice for VP for Biden (Sorry Harris Fans, that Includes Kamala)

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s latest eBook,Coronavirus the Revealer: How the Coronavirus Pandemic Exposes America As Unprepared for Biowarfare & Bioterrorism, Highlighting Traditional U.S. Weakness in Unconventional, Asymmetric Warfare, available in Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and EPUB editions.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here and, of course, please share the hell out of this article!!

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) August 8, 2020 (See Brian’s follow-up articles: August 20, 2020, I Was Wrong about Harris. Why I Changed My Mind and How She Won Me Over and August 11, 2020: Substance vs. Style as Biden Picks Harris over Rice)

WASHINGTON—There is no question the punditry’s Conventional Wisdom has California Senator Kamala Harris as “the favorite”, or front-runner, for Joe Biden’s vice-presidential sweepstakes. 

Besides Elizabeth Warren, it is hard to find any current sitting senator with more star power or who inspires more passion from supporters than she, the only other exception being Elizabeth Warren or, at the very least, out of any Democratic senator; Cory Booker sort of comes to mind, yet Harris polled so much higher than him in the primaries that that surely dampens that argument, as has the number of times she has been highlighted by the mainstream news media compared to him.  While few can compare to the likes of freshman House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Speaker Nancy Pelosi for Congressional publicity in the House (though Reps. Ilhan Omar, Ted Lieu, and Adam Schiff would get honorable mentions), the Senate just has a lot of older folks who simply come off as more boring.  On the right, Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton are stars and good at getting lots of coverage and publicity, and while younger and engaging Cory Booker is helped a bit by his celebrity girlfriend Rosario Dawson, there just aren’t many senators that generate much excitement, quotable videos, or positive press coverage regularly aside from Warren.

However, there is a special climate in this time of a serious racial awakening in America in light of the mass groundswell behind the black lives matter movement in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd as well as other African-Americans and the massive protests and some rioting  that came in the wake of Floyd’s killing, events which unfolded of in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and worst economic crisis in America since the Great Depression.  And in this climate, we can pretty much count Warren out (and could even before indications are that Biden has narrowed his list down to two women of color, Sen. Harris and Susan Rice, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations and former National Security Advisor, both in the Obama Administration), as the spirit and mood of both the media elites and Party activists—along with at least the most vocal part of the Democratic electorate—seem to strongly prefer a non-white running mate.  Also, I won’t even get into these in detail here, but there are other clear reasons for Biden not to pick Warren that range from her narrow ideological appeal (the absurdity that somehow she would bring in lots of Bernie voters, who generally seem to hate her, does not hold much water) to her frequent inability to work well with the leaders of her own Party, including Obama himself when she had a real chance to be chosen lead her brainchild, the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau, but blew it.  Most important is that her style and politics are quite different from Biden, even as they agree on the larger issues more or less, and, when it comes to being picked as a vice president, the ability to work with with—and, especially, defer to—your running mate is paramount.

Counting Warren as essentially out, it is useful to briefly compare the lives of Harris and Rice, who were born in the same year within a month of each other, making the comparisons especially apt.  Most available biographies of them are short, the exceptions being their own memoirs, though Wikipedia provides quite a few details and citations.

As I write this, I will note that I have been watching and really enjoying ESPN’s The Last Dance (an amazing documentary series about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls’s championship teams, especially their final championship run) recently, and there are two main facets to how a player gets selected for a team and how they perform: the numbers and the intangibles, the latter being traits that do not show up on paper but are still vital, including personality.  We will leave that second category for a sequel piece, as the first category, the resume, what a player’s trading card would look like for Harris and Rice, is going to be our subject for today.

A Tale of Two Women

Harris was the child of a black Jamaican father and an Indian mother, both immigrants who achieved elite status as a distinguished professor and a cancer scientist, respectively, who divorced when Harris was seven.  The eventual senator was born and raised in California, but attended an elite public high school in a suburb of Montreal, Canada, participating in the pep club and a dance group, and her grades, according to one classmate, were among the best in her class.

Susan Rice’s parents were also elites and both black Americans, her mother a prominent education policy scholar and her father a prominent economic policy scholar, each heavily involved in the U.S. government in fairly high-tier, prestigious capacities.  Rice was born and raised in Washington, DC, and her parents divorced when she was ten.  Her mother would remarry, a prominent lawyer in a major government position.  Rice’s family was friends with Madeleine Albright, then already experienced in government and a prominent scholar, and, when Rice was becoming a young woman, a top foreign policy advisor to major Democratic Party figures.  She acted as mentor to the young Rice, who was already exposed to lots of government policy discussions at her dinner table.  In high school, Rice lettered in three varsity sports, was student government president, and graduated as the top student in her class, the valedictorian of a top-tier elite private school in Washington.

Harris certainly had an impressive record as a student before college, but it is still one that pales in comparison to Rice, who dominated as a valedictorian, a leader on and off the field, and, in terms of government, was exposed to top policymakers and experts and their policy debates in her family and its circle of friends at a young age in ways Harris was decidedly not.

If we move on to college, both women graduated in 1986 with Bachelor of Arts degrees in the short-term, in Harris’s case, from Howard University, where she double-majored in political science and economics.  While attending school, she interned as a mailroom clerk for one of her California senators, led both a campus economics society and the debate team, and joined a sorority (the nation’s oldest African-American one).  In 1989, she had earned her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and passed her bar exam shortly after, being admitted to the California Bar in 1990. 

Rice attended Stanford as an undergraduate, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most exclusive academic honor society, also generally thought to be the most prestigious, and also won a Truman Scholarship, the nation’s most prestigious graduate fellowship for public service leadership.  Her B.A. in History was awarded with honors.  She also earned a Rhodes Scholarship, studying at the UK’s world-renown Oxford University, where earned a Masters and a Doctorate in Philosophy in 1988 (while also serving as a foreign policy advisor to Michael Dukakis’s campaign) and 1990, respectively, each in International Relations.  Her doctoral dissertation was named the best in the UK in her field by the Royal Institute of International Affairs (also known as Chatham House) and it also won a Royal Commonwealth Society award for outstanding research in the field of Commonwealth history.

Again, while Harris’s achievements and activities in school were impressive by any standard, Rice’s were absolute standouts among standouts and far exceeded even Harris’s high bar, especially in graduate school, where Rice gained entry into far more elite and exclusive programs and then literally bested all her peers in the UK, winning two Royal awards.

The 1990s would be years of solid achievement for both women.

Harris was hired in 1990 as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California, an incredibly impressive achievement for someone who passed the bar the same year; in this role, her performance was noted positively.  By 1994, she was dating the Speaker of the California Assembly, Willie Brown, (the lower house of the California State Legislature), who placed her in 1994 in a board spot on California’s Unemployment Insurance Appeals body and, subsequently, a spot on the California Medical Assistance Commission, for which she temporarily left her prosecutor position.  By 1998, she was picked by the San Francisco District Attorney (DA) as Assistant District Attorney (ADA), where she ran the Career Criminal Division, taking on many of the most serious violent cases and where she quickly stood out for her leadership and passion, challenging her more established male superiors and connecting in significant ways with the public and the media to raise her profile and fight for her agenda.  This caused controversy, friction, a true battle of egos, and, eventually, resulted in Harris quitting her post in 2000 (more on that another time).

Rice would work for two years for famed consulting firm McKinsey, but with the election of Bill Clinton to the presidency, she joined the Clinton Administration in 1993 as a National Security Council (NSC) staffer, until 1995 as director for international organizations and peacekeeping and then, rising quickly, as special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs until 1997.  With lobbying from Madeleine Albright, then Secretary of State, Bill Clinton appointed Rice Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in 1997.  Rice’s relative youth and meteoric rise made some of the “old guard” uncomfortable, but Rice’s direct yet persuasive approach won over some of her doubters.  Her time in the Clinton Administration was during an era of major upheaval throughout Africa and major peacekeeping and international aid and development initiatives, and she managed to have significant impact on a number of pressing crises.

After Harris quit her ADA role, moving to a role in San Francisco City Hall under the City Attorney and running the Family and Children’s Services Division, fighting against neglect and abuse, it was soon fairly clear Harris was planning a comeback to challenge and overthrow her former colleagues at the DA’s office, beginning to seriously organize in 2002, even persuading top Democrats to not endorse her incumbent former boss who was in the middle of a significant scandal.  She also out-fundraised her opponent significantly, running to his right and beating him in 2003 by a significant margin to become the state’s first black DA in 2004.  As San Francisco DA, she was aggressive on pursuing violent crime and made significant improvements in multiple areas, including conviction rates, recidivism, and truancy.  As DA for San Francisco, she was named a “Woman of Power” by the National Urban League Conference, won the National Black Prosecutors Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award, and was voted onto the National District Attorneys Association’s Board of Directors as vice president and appointed as co-chair of its Corrections and Re-Entry Committee.  At the end of the decade, she began preparing a campaign to become the California Attorney General. 

After the election of George W. Bush to the presidency, Rice was a managing director and principal at political risk consulting group Intellibridge from 2001-2002 (it was eventually bought by Ian Bremmer’s Eurasia Group), then moved onto the influential Brookings Institute, where, as a senior fellow, she worked on a number of major international issues from 2002-2009, including global poverty, transnational security threats, weak and failing states, and U.S. foreign policy.  While at Brookings, she also served as a top foreign policy advisor to John Kerry’s presidential campaign and played a similar role for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, taking on that role relatively early, also playing a top tole on his incoming Administration’s transition team, during which Obama announced he would appoint Rice as America’s Ambassador to the United Nations, elevating it back to a cabinet-level position; thus, it was clear Rice would play a major role in in the incoming Obama-Biden Administration.

While Harris the 2000s would have a clear edge in governmental experiences to Rice’s more academic decade, both would position themselves for meteoric rises in the 2010s.

In Harris California Attorney General campaign, she won early the backing of major California Democrats.  While easily winning the Democratic Primary, she barely won the 2010 general election by 0.5% but still did so, becoming both the state’s first black person and first woman elected to that office, assuming it in early 2011.  She won reelection by a wide margin in 2014, and her time as attorney general was often characterized by boldness and impressive results, including in corporate accountability, truancy, recidivism, the environment, and aspects of police reform.  Though not without controversy, hers was a historic tenure in the office, and as attorney general she was co-awarded the Bipartisan Justice Award (shared with Republican Senator Tim Scott) by the 20/20 Bipartisan Justice Center.  She left her second term early after winning the 2016 election for a California U.S. Senate seat.  While none of her sponsored legislation has been enacted into law in a Republican-controlled Senate, she did receive as senator the ECOS Environmental Award for her efforts towards environmental protection throughout her career and she has been adept at making hers a voice that is heard and covered by the media (and shared on social media) on a variety of issues.

During the time Rice was with the Obama-Biden Administration, she served all of its first term as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, a cabinet-level position restored to that status by Obama in a sign of his confidence in her and value to him as an advisor.  She conducted high-level diplomacy through many crises, including involving Israelis and Palestinians as well as the Arab Spring.  She championed anti-poverty efforts, human rights (including women’s rights), non-proliferation, and was effective in implementing tough sanctions on North Korea and Iran, the latter of which helped set the stage for the eventual Iran nuclear deal.  She was a major force in ending the full-scale Libyan Civil War, and though she became controversially embroiled in the Benghazi attacks’ fallout, ten investigations failed to find any wrongdoing on her part, including six led by Republicans, though this controversy would lead her to withdraw herself from the path to becoming the next U.S. Secretary of State.  Instead, she would be named by Obama early in his second term in 2013 as U.S. National Security Advisor, where she continued to work on many of the same issues as she had as UN Ambassador.  One issues she had a measurable impact on was her helping to mitigate the aggressiveness of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.  She even presciently saw the national security threat that a pandemic could post.  Throughout Obama’s presidency, she was present and participated in key meetings on key issues making key policy, working closely with both Obama and Biden.  Shortly after the Obama-Biden Administration was out of power, France awarded Rice with its prestigious Commander, Legion of Honor rank, one of the highest awards France can bestow on anyone, instituted by Napoleon himself.

Based on Experience, Rice is the Clear Choice for Biden

To return to our NBA trading card comparison, both Rice and Harris would be All Stars, but Rice’s stats would make her one of the top players (the top in this year’s draft), and while Harris would be a very talented player any team would be lucky to have, still among the best of the picks available, any team would draft Rice over Harris based on their stats unless, somehow, a team was overstacked on foreign policy and desperately needed criminal justice system experience. 

And that is no to say Rice has no relevant domestic experience or insight: she still had to lobby congress in her various roles, still worked three presidential campaigns where her foreign police expertise would have been engaged through the prism of domestic politics, and grew up in a family where her parents, step-father, and other close family friends were deeply involved in domestic policy, having that be part of young Susan’s regular dinner conversations with prominent from active practitioners.  And the same can be said for foreign policy.

On top of that, Rice’s academic credentials are quite exceptional and add further dimensions to her policy expertise in ways that I would say career practitioners who do not take some academic time generally fail to match.  While in office, public officials are pulled in so many directions that a Rhodes Scholarship and years at the Brookings Institute can offset by allowing more focused, in-depth research.  But the last academic experience Harris had was law school, which admittedly is broad and pulls students into many directions.  Harris of course deserves praise for earning two degrees, but Rice exceeded this achievement with three.  Rice also went to better institutions and distinguished herself more, winning prestigious top-tier honors and awards Harris did not and standing out to a far higher degree.

In addition, Rice has some experience in the private sector, and therefore a deeper understanding of it and economic issues, whereas Harris has only been in government since passing her bar exam.

To briefly review:

In the 1990s, Harris was putting in time in with various district attorneys offices, and, to be sure, she impressively got selected for these positions at a young age.  But Rice at the same time rose to leadership roles in the National Security Council and State Department, and working in state DA offices pales in comparison.

In the 2000s, Harris had a leg up in earning relevant experience, staying in government while Harris took a more academic turn, though she still managed to work for two presidential campaigns.

Yet in the 2000s and through 2016, Harris’s work would remain narrowly focused on one aspect of domestic policy—law enforcement—while Rice during the Obama-Biden Administration was one of the senior officials in the entire U.S. government on both national security and the entirety of U.S. foreign policy.  She worked closely with President Obama and Vice President Biden throughout the Obama-Biden Administration, including in a cabinet-level position, and would thus have a far deeper understanding of how the White House works and works with the rest of government and Congress than Harris would.

To be clear, this is not an anti-Harris argument, but between two exceptional, amazing, inspiring women of color who overcame much adversity in their careers, one stands out far more in terms of her government experience and accomplishments than the other, and that person is easily Susan Rice.

See Brian’s follow-up article: Substance vs. Style as Biden Picks Harris over Rice and related article: Benghazi Hearing: GOP’s Embarrassing Shame, Clinton’s Triumphant Vindication

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s latest eBook,Coronavirus the Revealer: How the Coronavirus Pandemic Exposes America As Unprepared for Biowarfare & Bioterrorism, Highlighting Traditional U.S. Weakness in Unconventional, Asymmetric Warfare, available in Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and EPUB editions.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here and, of course, please share the hell out of this article!!

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!