Maeve Higgins: Is Kamala Harris’ VP role a route to the top or a poisoned chalice?

Once more, a community in mourning, a muted but palpable sense of rage at this all too regular injustice, and the familiar faces of black leaders such as Rev Al Sharpton calling for change.

But there was one notable difference at this funeral: the presence of US vice president Kamala Harris.

The second-highest officer in the executive branch of the US federal government, after President Biden, VP Harris not only showed up at the funeral, she stood and spoke at the service in the church.

A cynic may see it as a political chess move, but I was impressed by her humanity and her understanding of just how important it was to be there.

It is rare for someone of that stature to put themselves forward in such a moment of public grief and anger, especially when they are part of the system culpable in deaths like Nichols’.

In 2014, President Obama sent three White House aides to Ferguson to represent his administration at Michael Brown’s funeral — another unarmed black man, this time just 18 years old — also shot to death by the police.

In 2020, Mike Pence spoke of George Floyd’s murder by a police officer as a tragedy, and in the same breath, said that “all lives matter” — a coded way of disagreeing with the central tenet of the Black Lives Matter movement.

So attending and speaking at this funeral was a first, albeit a grim one, and made me think about Kamala Harris today, more than two years into the Biden administration.

A complicated role

Most everyday citizens only give the vice president a second thought if they do something stupid or suddenly become president. The job is complicated, blending a unique need for humility with close access to power.

Each vice president must walk the thinnest of lines between subservient and authoritative. They’re answerable to one boss, a man (so far, always a man) who was most likely once their peer and competitor. Their ambitions must be, if not shelved entirely, put to one side to focus on the job at hand.

The job varies according to who the president is and what their priorities and management style are, but there are a few constants.

Vice presidents have the sole power to break a tie vote in the Senate and they formally preside over the receiving and counting of electoral ballots cast in presidential elections.

Then there is the slight possibility that you could suddenly become the most powerful person in the world — handed the keys to the White House along with a neat little satchel containing nuclear launch codes.

“The vice president simply presides over the Senate and sits around hoping for a funeral,” Harry Truman wrote those lines to his daughter Margaret. “Hope I can dodge it. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a nice address but I’d rather not move in through the back door — or any other door at 60.”

As fate would have it, Truman did become Franklin D Roosevelt’s vice president. He served less than 90 days as vice president before Roosevelt died, and Truman succeeded him.

In her book First in Line: Presidents, Vice Presidents, and the Pursuit of Power, Kate Andersen Brower quotes Truman, who confided his doubts about the role of vice president to a reporter before he took the job: “Do you recall what happened to most vice presidents who succeeded to the presidency? Usually, they were ridiculed in office, had their hearts broken, lost any vestige of respect they had had before. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

Truman was elected and served as president for another term after succeeding Roosevelt, but perhaps that meant he was the exception to his own rule.

Brower spent two years researching her book and interviewing former vice presidents and historians.

She remains intrigued: “It’s a fascinating job because of the emotions, I think, and the patterns of ambition and the power struggles behind it.”

Fifteen of the 49 vice presidents who have served the United States have become president. Eight of these have risen to the Oval Office because of a president’s death or assassination, meaning just seven, including President Biden, made the transition successfully without their bosses dying or being killed.

Not every VP wants to be president, but Kamala Harris does.

In 2020, she ran for the office and was a front-runner for a hot minute before fading and ultimately being chosen by Biden as his running mate.

In First In Line, Brower writes that in the past decades, presidential candidates have chosen their potential vice presidents either because they can help them get elected or they can help them govern.

I asked how she would characterise the Biden/Harris relationship. “I think that Kamala Harris helped him get elected because she’s more liberal; she brought along women, younger voters, people of colour, and people who thought Biden was too old or too moderate,” Brower says.

“I’m not seeing a lot of evidence that she’s helping him really govern,” she adds. "I think that the most powerful vice presidents are the ones who are involved in everything."

Dick Cheney was one such figure; he is widely seen as operating most parts of the George W Bush administration, particularly foreign policy.

Biden was famously close to his boss, President Obama, at least personally. He reportedly spent many hours a day with Obama and was in on every major meeting. But in 2016, President Obama did not endorse Biden for the presidency, choosing Hilary Clinton instead. 

In-depth articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post this past year have questioned Harris' performance, with reports of low popularity in the polls and Democrats’ misgivings about her selection featuring heavily.

It’s strange to me, though, that there is such disappointment being expressed about her and tacitly by Biden’s people.

As the creators of the brilliant HBO series Veep knew well, the job of vice president is rich with comedy potential. After all, Dick Cheney accidentally shot an elderly acquaintance of his in the face.

But her sins, as reported, are that some of her staff have left or been replaced, and she fumbled a 2021 interview about the border.

The fact remains that Harris has not made any significant missteps, so it seems she must reach a higher standard than her predecessors to be considered equally successful.

As a black woman, this is surely not news to her. Mainly though, I suspect that’s just the job. It’s evident by now that President Biden isn’t keen on getting her promoted. Kamala Harris' political destiny is unknown; the vice presidency may yet pave her way to the top, but it could just as easily be a poisoned chalice.

For now she must persevere in having, in Brower’s words, “the deeply humbling experience of being the president’s understudy”.