- Vice President Kamala Harris is the president-in-waiting serving alongside the oldest president in US history.
- Being VP is a tough balancing act for politicians who want to build their brands without seeming ambitious.
- Biden is sympathetic to Harris' situation, and the White House is trying to show that Harris will be a powerful VP.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Kamala Harris is the president-in-waiting.
It's the awkward reality that has always come with being second-in-command. The vice president's principal job function is to be ready to step in if she's needed.
At the same time, Harris can't appear over-eager to get the top job, and Democrats bristle at questions about whether she's interested in a future White House run or whether Biden — the oldest president in US history at age 78 — intends to try for a second term in 2024.
So — just like (the male) veeps who came before her — Harris and her team must walk the fine line of protecting her image and building a brand while also portraying her as a loyal soldier on Team Biden and dismissing any speculation that she's eyeing another presidential run of her own.
Harris' vice presidency is historic. She's the first woman VP, the first Black VP, and the first Asian-American VP. She's become an icon who's idolized by young girls and women across the country. She's got a huge constituency that would love to see her become the first woman president. Her online supporters even have their own hashtag, the #KHIVE.
Harris was "an icon before she even set foot in the White House," said Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist who worked on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign. "I think she's a bridge to the next generation of Democrats" and a bridge to progressives, women, and people of color, he added.
"They feel like they have a champion in the White House," Payne said.
Fans and foes will be watching for whatever high-profile project Harris takes on as her signature issue to set her up for what will inevitably be seen as a future presidential run. Those close to her and the White House are not divulging anything. At least not yet.
Fortunately for Harris, Biden is sympathetic to her plight as second-in-command. He knows how awkward the job can be after serving as former President Barack Obama's VP for eight years. Their time in the White House was complicated. The Biden-Obama "bromance" garnered attention on social media, but their relationship was rocky at times. And Biden, who had tried for a short while and failed to win the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2008 cycle, hadn't even wanted the No. 2 job initially.
"There's no power in the vice presidency ― you're stand-by equipment," Biden said in a 2018 speech recounting how he'd at first refused Obama's offer. In his autobiography, Biden wrote that the VP's office "has a long and storied career — as a punch line."
Given Biden's own history with the job and Harris' historic role, the president and his team are trying to make it abundantly clear that she is his full partner in the White House. That's in part because Biden wants to help her avoid the indignities that have historically come with the office, according to Democrats close to the administration.
On top of that, Democratic insiders say, Biden has a lot to do, and he'll need her help.
"This is a two-person job. It's really a 2,000 person job," said Greg Simon, whom Biden hired to lead the White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force during the Obama administration. Simon pointed to the hefty workload the new administration has taken on in tackling the pandemic, the economy, climate change, racial justice, and government ethics.
"You can no longer just treat the vice president as a president-in-waiting, they need to be as presidential as they can be the entire time," said Simon, who was also a senior policy advisor to Vice President Al Gore.
'Dumb idea' to sideline your VP
President Franklin Roosevelt kept his vice president out of the loop about the Manhattan Project, so Harry Truman didn't find out about the US atomic bomb until Roosevelt died in office and the Missourian became president.
Don't expect Biden to keep secrets like that from Harris, according to five White House officials and Democratic insiders.
"Cutting your VP out of the action is a really short-sighted and dumb idea," said Elaine Kamarck, who was a senior advisor to Gore and who wrote a book about how vice presidents are picked.
Veterans of the vice president's office expect that Harris will be empowered within the Biden White House and that she'll carve out policy priorities just as her predecessors have done.
Gore was known for his work on environmental issues and for his effort to boost efficiency in the federal government. Dick Cheney was widely viewed as the most powerful VP in US history after he helped dramatically overhaul the country's national security landscape. Biden was the White House point man on the 2009 stimulus legislation and he took the lead on the Obama administration's cancer moonshot initiative after his son, Beau, died of brain cancer.
Obama "handed me big things to run from the beginning of our first term" including the stimulus, budget negotiations with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and diplomatic relationships with Iraq, Biden wrote in his autobiography. Then "he did not look over my shoulder."
Harris, who arrived in Washington in 2017 as a California senator, doesn't have the decades of Capitol Hill experience that Biden brought to the job as VP. Still, she could spend a lot of time in the Senate, where she could be the tie-breaking vote on contentious nominations and some legislation.
"I think she'll be — at least initially — likely to be really critical to the deliberations here," Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine told Insider in an interview on Capitol Hill this week. That could include a COVID19 response package, he said. "We could need her to break the tie."
Harris' supporters say she'll be an important champion on issues like racial equity and women's issues. But they stress that the White House will want to be cautious about ensuring that the first woman of color to serve as vice president also has a broader portfolio — and that advocacy on issues of race and gender is also coming from Biden.
"I think it would be a mistake — and I don't think they would do this — to delegate an issue of such critical importance to her because she is a woman of color," said Brian Brokaw, who was Harris' campaign manager when she ran for California attorney general.
Harris is well-positioned to take a leading role on climate change, due in part to how important the issue is back in her home state of California, Brokaw said. And as the daughter of immigrants who focused on immigration as attorney general, that's another of her policy strong suits, he added.
After the Biden team's first 30 days in the White House, a whirlwind period that will include lots of executive orders and Donald Trump's second impeachment trial, Simon said he's confident that Harris "will emerge with a very robust portfolio that she will be in charge of."
'Last voice in the room'
Putting their partnership on display has been the Biden-Harris playbook so far.
During their first week in office, Harris has been a fixture at Biden's side in the Oval Office as he's signed executive orders reversing Trump administration policies on issues like healthcare, climate change, and immigration. Harris and Biden have both been attending closed-door daily briefings in the Oval Office and meetings with senior administration officials on the pandemic and the economy. They also had lunch together last Friday in the private White House dining room.
Biden and Harris are "walking into this" together, a White House official said of their approach to divvying up policy work. For now, that means both of them are focused on tackling the pandemic.
When Biden asked Harris to join him on the ticket, he made her the same offer he'd extracted out of Obama in 2008.
Before Biden agreed to be Obama's running mate, he told his future boss he wanted "to be the last person in the room before he made important decisions," Biden said in August. "That's what I asked Kamala. I asked Kamala to be the last voice in the room."
The president is looking for a partnership with Harris that's similar to the one Biden had with Obama, the White House official said.
From critic to VP
Harris was at one point one of Biden's biggest Democratic critics on the presidential campaign trail. Her broadside against the ex-Delaware senator during a primary debate over his stance on mandatory school busing in the 1970s raised questions among Biden's allies about her loyalty during the vice-presidential vetting process.
But the president and vice president appear to have put those campaign rifts behind them. And in the very early days of the administration, Harris has shown she's clearly on Team Biden.
"I think any of those worries have been put to bed over the course of the campaign," Brokaw said. "She's a team player and I think she's shown that."
There's no doubt there are still some policy disagreements between Biden and Harris on issues ranging from taxes to health care to marijuana legalization. But Democrats don't expect her to take a big stand against the president in the backdrop of major issues the country must first deal with, like providing relief to Americans ravaged by the pandemic.
The opportunity for Harris to show her differences could come down the road — if and when she decides to launch her own bid for the White House. But for now the Biden White House isn't interested in answering questions about future presidential runs.
"His focus is not on politics," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last week when asked about Biden's reelection plans in 2024. "He will wait until sometime into his first term to speak more about his political plans."
