As president of America, would Kamala Harris be able to give the United States a credible face on the world stage? Michelle Obama claimed that Harris is one of the most qualified presidential candidates ever. Roberta N. Haar lays out the facts in a submitted opinion.
At the end of July, shortly after U.S. President Joe Biden announced he would not seek reelection and threw his support behind his Vice President Kamala Harris, interest in what a Harris presidency would mean for U.S. allies across the Atlantic began in earnest. I interviewed with Studio Europa and more recently with Bloomberg TV on the topic. Certainly, many Europeans were eagerly watching the Democratic National Convention (DNC) that strove for a joyful anointment of Harris through many passionate speeches by leaders in the Democratic Party. Michelle Obama’s speech stated that Harris is “one of the most qualified people ever to seek the office of the presidency.” Europeans want to know if Michelle is right.
California’s Attorney General
From a domestic point of view, Michelle could be right. As a former attorney general of California, Harris knows the American legal system and as a Senator for California, she knows how to make laws at the federal level. She is a passionate defender of civil and human rights and a stalwart prosecutor of perpetrators of crimes. Her time in the Senate was marked by smart cross-examination of witnesses on the Judiciary Committee. Moreover, in her 59 years, Harris has achieved a long list of trail-blazing appointments—as the first woman, or first woman of color—that point to resilience, a thick skin, and the ability to adapt and learn quickly.
On the other hand, her presidential bid in 2019 was marred with inconsistent policy positions and turmoil within her campaign team. Many candidates fail in their presidential bids, so this does not prove Michelle Obama wrong, but it does raise flags about Harris’ leadership and managerial competencies.
Foreign Policy chops
However, when it comes to foreign policy, Michelle Obama might be very wrong. In the foreign policy-making realm, Harris may not have the policy “chops.” Having “chops” means having experience and expertise in a policy area. And, when it comes to foreign policy, Harris would start her presidency with some of the least amount of experience of any recent president, bar Donald Trump (and we know how that went). Since current demands on the commander-in-chief include new nuclear plans to deter Russia, China, and North Korea simultaneously and the need to write a strategy for Ukraine, the next president must hit the ground running.
Yes, she was Vice President (VP), but without an agency to give them a greater power base, Vice Presidents tend to float above the other cabinet bureaucracies in the National Security Council. Departments, especially Defense, are much larger and wield more power in foreign policy discussions. If the VP does not have an obvious partnership (as Al Gore or Dick Cheney had with their presidents), his or her influence on policy is limited.
I just completed an academic article for the journal Politics & Policy on Barack Obama’s foreign policy that identified many sources in Obama’s policy on multilateral military operations; his VP’s views were some of the least consequential. This was despite Biden’s tremendous experience in foreign policy.
In Harris’ case, not only was her time in the Senate (2017-2021) brief but she did not sit on the most consequential committees dealing with foreign affairs. She was on the Judiciary and the Select Committee on Intelligence, both of which could bolster her previous emphasis on human rights.
A Foreign Policy neophyte
What does it mean that Harris is a novice in foreign affairs? Perhaps not a lot. Even though Biden had experience he catastrophically bungled the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and he did not instill deference from his global opponents nor did his leadership dissuade global dictators from intimidating and attacking their neighbors. Experience does not guarantee success.
Instead, it has more to do with being able to work out the rough costs of implementing a policy and possessing the power to persuade the millions of civil servants and military personnel who make up the executive branch, as well as the deeply opinionated members of the legislative branch, that they should go along with your policy vision.
We simply do not know if Harris has these sorts of “chops.” We do, however, know that Trump does not have them. We can only hope that Harris will follow what Obama said in his DNC speech: that she is honest, that she has integrity and that she believes that America is a force for good on the global stage.
She will make mistakes, but will she learn from them while at the same time sticking to the values that uphold democracy and the liberal world order? Other speakers at the DNC, like her running mate Governor Tim Walz, emphasized that Harris is tough on criminals and powerful men who engage in exploitative and harmful behavior. Let’s hope she is tough when she needs to be against future threats. Still, I can imagine the dictators of this world smirking at their comparison to California criminals.