OPINION:
“I’m the vice president of the United States. Anything that I handle is because it’s a tough issue. And it couldn’t be handled at some other level,” Vice President Kamala Harris told CBS’ Margaret Brennan this weekend when asked if her portfolio was too large and setting her up for failure.
“I have a job to do. And I’m going to get that job done,” Ms. Harris assured Ms. Brennan.
Two weeks ago, when asked by Comedy Central host Charlamagne tha God, who the “real” president was – President Biden or Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia — Ms. Harris became visibly frustrated.
“And it’s Joe B-, Joe B-, Joe Biden, and I’m vice president, and my name is Kamala Harris,” she responded, testily, waving her finger at the Black host, and questioned if he was an undercover Republican.
Yes, Kamala, we all know you’re vice president. Picked by Mr. Biden because of your gender and race — and little else by way of real accomplishments. Insecure much?
There’s no doubt, Ms. Harris is trying to revamp her image with the American public as her approval rating sits at an abysmal 28%, and some within her own party are questioning her qualifications to become the heir apparent.
Yet Ms. Harris has done little to reassure them: Her only calling card (and one that she uses frequently) is her title.
Ms. Harris, who has been tasked with tackling the ongoing border crisis, is uninterested in the issue.
Last week, Rep. Henry Cuellar, a moderate Texas Democrat whose district covers nearly 200 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, told The New York Times that Ms. Harris has refused to take his calls.
“I say this very respectfully to her: I moved on,” Mr. Cuellar told The Times. “She was tasked with that job; it doesn’t look like she’s very interested in this, so we are going to move on to other folks that work on this issue.”
As a zinger, Mr. Cuellar said of Mr. Biden’s office, “at least they talk to you.”
So, what exactly is Ms. Harris up to? In her interviews, she brags about meeting with foreign heads of state. But when asked by Ms. Brennan what her biggest failure was, she responded “to not get out of D.C. more,” with a cackle.
Yet in the same interview, she seemed to get out plenty … just not to locations where she’s needed — like the southern border.
“When I was in France meeting with Macron, [cybersecurity] is one of the issues that we discussed,” Ms. Harris told Ms. Brennan of her five-day trip to Paris to meet with the French president last month, in which she dropped nearly $400 to buy a single pot in a fancy cookware shop outside the Louvre museum.
“I was in Guatemala because we have to address, in a comprehensive way, the root causes of migration,” she described of her June trip to the country and Mexico.
Alejandro Giammattei, Guatemala’s president, told Fox News this month he’s had no direct contact with the White House since “border czar” Harris’ June meeting, even though there’s “much to be done” to fix the migration crisis affecting both nations.
Yet, one needs not to worry.
“You know, I’ve been meeting with prime ministers and presidents from around the world. One of my favorite interactions was with the now past chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel,” Ms. Harris boasted to Ms. Brennan, further reinforcing her vice-presidential bona fides.
What was their conversation about? Only the greatest geopolitical threat of our time, according to Ms. Harris: democracy in America.
“[Merkel] asked me about voting, and she knew what was going on here. … We have been a role model saying, you can see this and aspire to this and reject autocracies and autocratic leadership. And right now, we’re about to take ourselves off the map as a role model, if we let — if we let people destroy one of the most important pillars of a democracy, which is free and fair elections,” Ms. Harris explained.
No, Ms. Harris. States enacting commonsense measures to protect the integrity of elections — such as presenting voter ID, signature verification, chain of custody controls, bipartisan observers and cleaning up voter rolls — are not a “threat to democracy.”
What was refreshing with Ms. Harris’ interview with CBS is that her staffers (who are really in control) didn’t have to cut her off, as they tried to do with Charlamagne tha God after the interview went off the rails.
It seemed Ms. Harris performed well enough for them this weekend. She is vice president, after all. And she does speak to fancy people, taking on “tough issues” — which have nothing to do with solving problems for the American people.
• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.
