The awkwardness was palpable a couple weeks ago when President Joe Biden responded to a reporter's question about whether Florida Governor Ron DeSantis should "take Vice President Harris's phone call" regarding the imminent landfall of Hurricane Milton. Biden looked down at his podium and said without saying, "She has nothing to do with any of this."
The issue only came up because Harris, desperate for an "unflappable during a crisis" photo-op, had accused DeSantis of focusing too much on emergency preparations and not enough on her effort to score political points. It was ham-fisted and ill-advised. An unforced error to be sure, but not an insurmountable one.
That may have come last week.
Shortly after news broke that Israeli Defense Forces had eliminated Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Harris (or someone on her advisory team) pulled together an impromptu press conference. It was all an effort to look presidential, to look calm, serious, and composed in the world of foreign affairs. It was her attempt at Obama's bin Laden speech, or even Trump's al-Baghdadi announcement. But it was not good.
If we were an informed country, and not a perilously polarized, absurdly tribal, emotionally obsessive one, her campaign could not recover from such a charade. Just think of all the reasons this was a disaster.
The U.S. had nothing to do with this operation. While some might disagree, I am willing to give Vice President Harris the benefit of the doubt and say that she was aware that this was solely an Israeli operation. But that only makes her credit-claiming all the more bizarre. Who wrote this speech and thought it wise to use the taunting language that conveys it was the courageous resolve of Americans to see this operation through to a successful completion? It's poor diplomatic relations, of course. But it's also incredibly poor speechcraft.
If there were any justifiable reason to give a speech of this nature, why didn't President Biden deliver it? Why is Kamala cosplaying as the president, and do you suppose the White House signed off on it? After all, when is the last time a vice president ever gave a speech like this after a successful military operation that brought down one of the world's worst actors?
Israel only fulfilled this important mission because they disregarded all the demands that the Biden administration, and specifically Kamala Harris, made of them. It was Harris herself that gave an interview months ago declaring that she had "studied the maps" and that it would be a huge mistake for Israel to enter the city of Rafah. The genocidal Sinwar was killed in Rafah, where he had been hiding in underground tunnels since the October 7th massacre he directed.
The Biden administration has continued to handcuff Israeli efforts to prosecute this war. Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed to see the conflict through to the ultimate destruction of Hamas and its enablers across the region. Israel has the weapons, intelligence, and resolve to do so. What they have lacked is the unfettered support of their supposed greatest ally, the United States. The Biden/Harris administration has disgracefully responded to Israeli operations with equivocation and unproductive calls for a ceasefire. Harris herself recently refused to identify Netanyahu as an important ally when pressed on 60 Minutes. Saber rattling and public crowing about Israel's actions when she has been nothing but an obstacle to their work is the height of either naiveté or hubris.
There's a reason that this woman did not receive a single vote when she ran in the Democrat presidential primary of 2020.
Her instincts are bad, her authenticity is worse, and her disposition is cringeworthy. If not for our imbecilic political environment, this clumsy attempt to hijack Israel's glory for foreign policy style points would have ended the Harris campaign.
But we're living through an era with a mentally incapacitated president, a shadowy consortium apparently running the country, and a presidential race between a notoriously incompetent woman that no one voted for and a crass entertainment mogul who has survived two assassination attempts (and spent time at his last public rally talking about the size of a deceased professional golfer's manhood).
