Sidelined and Self-Sabotaged: What The Last Politician Says About Kamala Harris ( nymag.com )

Harris’s lack of achievements were not the result of her not having the capacity for the job, according to the book. Foer takes pains to note that her contributions to meetings were often incisive as she “asked questions about equity that tended to be neglected.” Instead, it was a result of a personality that prized preparation for every possible aspect of an issue as she constantly read books and her briefing materials while constantly pressing those assigned to brief her. As Foer put it, “in her disciplined desire to prepare, she would become undisciplined about her own calendar.”

She also is characterized as having deep insecurity about her historic place as the first Black woman to serve in her position, which helped drive her relentless preparation. Harris initially insisted that she did not want her portfolio to include “women’s issues or anything to do with race.” At the same time, she wanted her staff to be majority female and her office run by a Black female chief of staff. The result was that Biden’s then-chief of staff Ron Klein concluded the vice president was “making life excessively difficult for herself.” Since then, Harris has gone on to become a top surrogate for the Biden administration both on voting rights and abortion rights in the aftermath of the 2022 Dobbs decision.

There is also a sense, throughout the book, of Harris as a neglected figure in the administration. Unelected Biden aides like Klain, Mike Donilon, and Steve Ricchetti are depicted as far more central to the White House’s functioning than the vice president. She is a minor character who has little role in both the administration’s domestic and foreign policy. The one moment that she intrudes on the latter is when she speaks at the Munich Security Conference in 2022 on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in what Foer describes Biden giving her “a public vote of confidence.” There, Harris followed in the footsteps of other administration officials attempting to convince Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky to seriously prepare for Russia’s upcoming onslaught.