Kamala Harris’s whirlwind tour of Japan and South Korea this week amounts to a microcosm for the state of her vice presidency: an ambitious, historic and increasingly confident effort still beset by the occasional high-profile gaffe.
In Japan, Harris stood alongside other world leaders at the state funeral for Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister whose assassination at a campaign event rattled a key American ally.
She delivered a carefully calibrated denunciation of China from the deck of a US warship intended to reassure allies—without deepening a rift with Beijing that President Joe Biden has widened with explicit pledges to defend Taiwan from an invasion.
Harris soothed South Korean leaders angry over new US tax credits for electric vehicles likely to disadvantage Asian automakers, while needling the country’s new president over gender inequities.
And at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the Korean peninsula, a photo-op of Harris gazing through binoculars across the heavily fortified border echoed the previous visits of five Presidents.
But the clip of the vice president circulating on cable news the next morning featured an unfortunate slip of the tongue, after she said the US had a “strong alliance” with “the Republic of North Korea.”
The moment illustrated the microscope of scrutiny that Harris, the nation’s first female vice president, labors under as she tries to rebuild her stature within the White House and with voters.
Her first year in office was marked by rampant staff turnover, rhetorical stumbles, and struggles to address migration from Central America, her highest-profile assignment from the president.
At the DMZ, Harris clearly meant to refer to the Republic of Korea—South Korea’s official name—and she is hardly the only politician to commit such a slip. Only hours earlier, Biden made a much more awkward gaffe when he called out for a deceased congresswoman at a White House event.
Still, White House officials say perceptions of Harris within the West Wing warmed in recent months as her office staff stabilized under a new chief of staff and the former California senator demonstrated more political acuity.
She has earned praise even from skeptics in the administration for her leadership of the White House’s response to the Supreme Court ruling striking down national abortion rights.
The vice president’s outspokenness on abortion has impressed Biden’s aides, according to a person familiar with their thinking, and is viewed as particularly helpful because the president—a nearly 80-year-old man and a practicing Catholic—can be uncomfortable speaking about the issue.
Harris, who is 57, has stood out as a key interlocutor with state and local women’s rights groups, a second person said. And she’s served as a bridge to Black, young, female and progressive voters who have not always rallied behind Biden.
She’s also shown enthusiasm for space exploration, welcoming a chance to lead the president’s National Space Council. Bloomberg News
Image credits: AP