The Danger of a Vice-President

I hate to say “I told you so”, but I did. Actually, like most people I don’t really hate to say it, except when being right means the projected worst outcome becomes horribly true. And that is what this column is about.

In a February 2. 2021 article criticizing Vice-President Kalamata Harris about her lack of knowledge about the distribution of COVID vaccines in Phoenix, Arizona, I noted:

“But there is no similar chaos in Arizona which is run by an extraordinarily competent former business executive Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ). One only had to go through one of the massive distribution facilities organized in Phoenix – like the one at the Arizona Cardinals stadium which is processing nearly 7,000 patients per day and which takes about 25 minutes from entry to exit with the majority of that time being dedicated to post inoculation observation (15 minutes). That inoculation site is only one of a number of mass immunization sites, including Phoenix Municipal Stadium and the State Fair Grounds. Most of the major hospitals have opened sites in their parking areas and local pharmacies are targeting specific areas where there is a concentration of seniors. Ms. Harris could have visited any of them and she would be startled to learn that they are run professionally and efficiently. None of them need “help” from the federal government. They sure do not need the type of ‘woke’ interference for which the Biden administration is becoming infamous.

“Ms. Harris could have asked about the number of inoculations processed in Arizona (one million as of this past Friday). There are 7.5 million people in Arizona – 4.5 million live in the Phoenix Metro area. With one million vaccinated, Arizona is racing toward “herd immunity.”

“But Ms. Harris never inquired. Mr. Biden never inquired. The mainstream media never inquired. Neither Facebook nor Twitter inquired. In sum and substance, the ignorant are now in charge and facts do not matter.

* * *

“Ms. Harris is a prime example of someone who remains studiously ignorant of the facts and even her early losses in the recent Democratic presidential primary processes due to that kind of superficiality has not taught her how woefully ignorant she remains.”

I have at various times described Ms. Harris as the most purposefully ignorant person in politics. It’s not that she cannot learn (at least I hope that is true); rather it’s that she simply refuses to do the work necessary to learn. And now we have proof from the inside. If you are a liberal/progressive you should know you are in trouble when the reliably accommodating Washington Post pillories you in an article like its December 4, 2021, take on the ongoing turmoil in Ms. Harris’ office – a revolving door of disaffected staffers who have had enough:

“Staffers who worked for Harris before she was vice president said one consistent problem was that Harris would refuse to wade into briefing materials prepared by staff members, then berate employees when she appeared unprepared.

“’It’s clear that you’re not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,’ one former staffer said. ‘With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So you’re constantly sort of propping up a bully and it’s not really clear why.’”

Ms. Harris has all of the resources of the federal government at her disposal. She is provided detailed briefing binders every morning on the geo-political state of the world. She has staff and federal agencies who provide voluminous studies with executive summaries on every issue from soup to nuts. And yet she remains ignorant.

Ms. Harris ran for the Democrat nomination for President of the United States. Upon her announcement she surged in the preference polls. She was the “ultimate Democrat candidate” – female, person of color, avid supporter of taxpayer funded abortion on demand, and a lifelong pubic employee. During that period she participated in debates, interviews and hundreds of “meet and greets.” And as she did her poll numbers eroded and she finally had to withdraw immediately prior to the California (her home state) primary where she was basically an “also-ran.” It was during those appearances that voters began to notice that she didn’t have any proposals and that she was content to echo the views of other candidates and to refer to critics as “racists”– she was the “me too” candidate. And the reason she didn’t have any proposals is because she wouldn’t do the work on issues – any issues. She remained uniquely ignorant and the voters knew it.

After her inauguration, Ms. Harris was appointed by President Joe Biden to manage the incursion of illegal aliens on the United States/Mexican border and to shepherd the plan to federalize the state voting systems (the grossly misnamed For the People Act of 2021 – HR 1) through Congress. She would not go to the border, she refused to learn about the status of the alien incursion, her conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Guatemala insulted them. She made a cursory visit to the members of Congress who had already pledged support for HR 1 to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The results were no progress on either front. Unlike running for office, accomplishing goals requires study, learning and action. If you won’t do the work, you will remain, like Ms. Harris, studiously ignorant.

But Ms. Harris has never had to do the work. She was admitted to law school on an affirmative action program known as the Legal Education Opportunity Program (LEOP). The program was intended for law students who were “disadvantaged” educationally, economically or by a physical disability – but in reality it was rooted in the racist notion that people of color could not learn at the same level as others. You see Ms. Harris is the child of middle-class parents – both of whom held PhD degrees. She was not educationally disadvantaged, economically disadvantaged or physically disadvantaged – but she was a person of color. Regardless, LEOP law students were mentored, cared for, supported, tutored and counseled in every way during their tenure at law school, including special law class outlines, preparation for the bar exams and job interviews. After law school she became a lawyer with a district attorney’s office where her most significant accomplishment was a multi-year affair with the married California Speaker of the House – the then most powerful Democrat in California politics, who went on to become the mayor of San Francisco. He in turn appointed her to various boards which resulted in a six figure income and a new car. Sex and political power rather than hard work and accomplishments guided her the rest of the way. Ms. Harris refused to learn but she found an easier way and remained studiously ignorant.

But being studiously ignorant is not the only disqualifier. Ms. Harris is a tyrant. As she blunders from one easily avoidable disaster to the next she rages privately at her staff and advisers, blaming them for the mistakes she makes out of studious ignorance. Ms. Harris epitomizes the ancient saying that “You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.” Cast in today’s world that saying might easily read, “You can lead a Harris to Washington but you cannot make her think.” The statement of one of her previous staff puts it succinctly. “With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence.”

It is one thing to be unqualified to be Vice-President. It is quite another to be dangerous due to purposeful ignorance. Ms. Harris is the singular reason to insure that Mr. Biden serves out his term regardless of his declining physical and mental acuity. Of course returning at least one house of the Congress to opposition control can serve as a check on Mr. Biden – the same cannot be said of a successor so unqualified that her decisions would reek of personal hubris and backed by rage at their failures. Think of the “nuclear trigger” in the hands of someone so volatile.

What a sad place that America finds itself.