The last time anyone outside of Washington noticed alleged Vice President Kamala Harris it was probably on the side of a milk carton.
I exaggerate, but not by much.
On the rare occasions that Harris does make the news, it’s for all the wrong reasons, like when she unleashes her Kraken cackle when asked even mildly challenging questions.
The rest of the time the bootlicking media is happy to keep Vice President AWOL under wraps because what else are they going to do?
It’s been a long way down for the woman once touted by her own boss as one-half of the “Biden-Harris Administration.”
Over the weekend the UK-based Telegraph described Harris as “perhaps the most low-profile individual to hold the post since the gaffe-prone Dan Quayle was kept out of the limelight to spare the first George Bush’s blushes.”
Curt Mills pointed out for the American Conservative on Monday that Harris “stands at Cheney-like notoriety, a 27.8 percent approval rating,” and I’d add that Harris can’t muster even 30% favorability when she’s out of the spotlight.
I’d pondered previously on this page if White House distrust of Harris was the reason she’d been assigned to “fix” the border crisis because it was a crap assignment on multiple levels.
The first level is that with Democrats in charge, there is no fixing the border crisis.
The second level is that, politically, the border was a lose-lose proposition for Harris. If she made progress, that would annoy her “woke” and “progressive” base. If she failed, she would make no friends with the moderates she might need in the future to further her presidential ambitions.
The third level is that the White House doesn’t actually want to solve the border crisis, they want to make it worse. So why not make the unloved, untrusted Harris the face of failure?
Recommended: Nice Infrastructure Bill You Have There, Joe — Too Bad It Might Have Destroyed Your Presidency
How does a Veep turn things around when the more people see her, the less they like her?
The solution seems to be to keep her looking busy doing things that A) no one cares about and B) not even Harris could screw up (probably, maybe).
Case in point.
Harris travels to France this week to shore up relations with America’s Oldest Ally™. Franco-American relations have been strained since Presidentish Joe Biden’s decision to undo a $65 billion submarine deal the French had made with Australia, in order to sell some American or British subs to our friends Down Under. The NATO alliance, already fraying, probably hasn’t been in this bad a shape since Charles DeGaulle kicked NATO forces out of France back in the ’60s.
Harris will sure look busy, and she’ll smile for all the right cameras while shaking all the right hands.
But NATO in general and France in particular barely rate as sideshows under this Administration, and the American public has bigger fish to fry right now — assuming we can afford the fish, or even the frying oil.
So maybe Harris will get something done, maybe not. But in either case, she’ll get some nice PR at taxpayer expense, and in a place where she can be under the public eye yet barely seen.
And that’s about as good as it gets these days for Vice President Milk Carton.
One More Thing: This week only, use promo code 2022 for a 40% discount on your new PJ Media VIP subscription — our largest discount ever!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member