It was an almost ordinary little day at the White House on Thursday, where at 10 a.m. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris together participated in the daily briefing on current international issues, led by the Intelligence Directorate. .
The day before, in the afternoon, the two elected officials, at the head of the executive, took part in the same exercise. Behind closed doors, as required by the nature of the meeting.
Together, at the House, Harris and Biden are now less and less outside and in public, after a departure placed under the sign of an unprecedented collaboration and which, last January, was also worth the vice-president the symbolic status of “co-president”.
At To have to, her close friend Carole Porter, met in Berkeley, California, confided that Kamala Harris was not going to become a discreet figure in the new government, but rather a “partner to govern”. Joe Bien “wants to be the president of the change, and part of this change will come through her,” she said at the time.
That was barely 10 months ago, and since then, the exercise of power seems to have changed everything.
“In a polarized and fragile America, promises seem more difficult to keep, and this one is no exception to the rule,” summarizes in an interview Jay Gonzalez, professor of public administration at Golden Gate University, who worked alongside Mr.me Harris during his years of service as the San Francisco County Immigrant Law Commissioner. “The vice president, whose actions and mind are on the left of the political spectrum, can easily stir up these tensions and weaknesses, which may partly explain why the White House considers it preferable to make her work in behind the scenes and give it a more secondary role. “
Proof. Named “border czarina” by Joe Biden, who entrusted her with delicate immigration matters, Kamala Harris was very little involved, openly at least, on this issue, while the crisis was growing at the border. south of the country. The Republican opposition has also exploited its silence to denounce the incompetence of the new government in the face of the sudden influx of migrants, fueled by the departure of Donald Trump from the White House.
At most, the vice-president was content to denounce the treatment of Haitians hunted like animals by border officers on horseback. The scenes, recalling the worst moments of the country’s slavery past, have toured the world.
In mid-October, she also left the head of American diplomacy, Anthony Blinken, to go to South America to try to rally the most democratic countries in the area around a more global management of ” paths of migration ”. The goal is to share the responsibility for welcoming these aspiring exile, politically risky for Washington.
Mme Harris, she preferred to campaign in Virginia for the Democratic candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe, who, Tuesday, however, did not win the ballot.
All eyes on 2024
On the international scene, however, the vice-president intends to be seen a little more. Next Tuesday, the former attorney general of California is flying to Europe, where she will speak at the Paris Peace Forum. She is also due to meet French President Emmanuel Macron there in another attempt by Washington to pick up the mess after the diplomatic crisis between the two countries caused by the sale of American submarines to Australia, and this, in contempt. contracts already concluded between Canberra and Paris for French submarines.
This third trip abroad for Mme Harris also aims to “develop her diplomatic experience”, exposed this week the former foreign policy adviser Colin Dueck on the airwaves of the public radio NPR, since within the Democratic Party, many see her already candidate for the presidency in 2024. Joe Biden, the oldest president in the country’s history, will then be 82 years old.
This prospect, for the vice-president, is not to be neglected any more for the Democratic Party, whose members are strongly divided on the chances of re-election of the current president. If 41% believe it can do it, 41% would give the mission to someone else, according to an NBC-Marist College poll.
But the distance taken in recent months does not yet seem to be playing in favor of Kamala Harris, who, to be part of these “others”, has a slope to go up: at the end of October, his popularity rating was as low as that of the president, at 42%, depending on Los Angeles Times. That’s 17 points lower than Biden when he was Barack Obama’s vice president in 2009.
This report was partially funded with support from the Transat International Journalism Fund.The duty.