How Joe Biden’s past could shape Kamala Harris’ as vice president

President-elect Joe Biden knows the challenges and the opportunities of the vice presidency better than any incoming president since George H.W. Bush.

Biden has said that any power a vice president has is purely “reflective,” meaning it is the president who decides how much influence his second-in-command wields. Now approaching his inauguration to the presidency, Biden seems to understand how critically important it is for him to share as much of his reflected light with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as possible. As our country faces a pandemic, ongoing racial injustice and deep mistrust of government, we need all the light we can get.

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If anyone would be open to sharing power and influence, it would be Biden, who served for eight years as vice president to Barack Obama — a leader who recognized that there are real risks in ignoring or mistreating your vice president.

“Number one, that person’s being underutilized,” Obama says in “President In Waiting,” a CNN Films documentary on the vice presidency. “Enormous talent that is not being tapped because there’s a lack of trust. Another thing is, mischief arises if you’ve got somebody who’s sitting down the hall in the West Wing who feels as if he is not being treated with respect and consulted on big decisions.”

Originally published at https://alphasocial2020.blogspot.com on December 5, 2020.