I Didn't Mastermind a Joe Biden Death Watch
You Can't Believe Everything You Read on the Internet
I didn’t mastermind Joe Biden’s death watch.
However, I did do my job as Vice President Kamala Harris’ communications director.
Recent media reports about Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen’s new book, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” are overblown. Feel free to read the book, not the internet.
Here’s what happened:
Before I started working as Vice President Kamala Harris’ communications director in 2022, I thought a lot about the job. I didn’t come to it as a newbie. Back in the 1990s, I set up White House events around the world for the President and Vice President. In that role, I staffed Al Gore for Nelson Mandela’s White House state dinner, and went with him to Namibia, the U.K and my favorite -- the Super Bowl.
I even went with Gore to Kyiv, Ukraine in 1994. Back then we called it Kiev. Gore was there to move along post-Soviet nuclear disarmament talks with then-Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. I see pictures of streets I visited on that trip that are now bombed out because of the war with Russia. It’s tragic.
Still, I did my research before I started the job. I listened to the audiobook of Kamala Harris’ The Truths We Hold to hear her tell stories in her own voice, getting familiar with her cadence and emphasis.
I read Joel K. Goldstein’s The Modern Vice Presidency: the Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden, to get a modern take on the job. I also re-read parts of First to Speak by Kristin Clark Taylor, who had been deputy press secretary to Vice President George H.W. Bush and the first African American Director of Media Relations in President Bush White House. I wanted the perspective of an African American.
I learned a lot, but fundamentally the job hasn’t changed. Any vice president has only two constitutionally mandated duties. She must preside over the Senate, breaking ties when needed, and be prepared to step into the presidency if the president is unable to complete his term for any reason.
It was that last duty that propelled me to take the job in the White House at all. She needed to both be ready and communicate she was ready. I met Kamala Harris back in 2008 when she was California District Attorney. In 2011, I attended her first swearing-in as California Attorney General and although we had friends in common from San Francisco, including members of her family, we weren’t friends by any stretch.
That said, I felt obligated to help her. She was the first Black (and South Asian) woman to be elected vice president and my two-year-old daughter and every other little girl in America deserved to have her as a hero.
As I prepared for government service that winter, the country was unsettled. The Afghanistan withdrawal had not gone well, and Harris had a rough first year. At the end of 2021 both the President and Vice President’s poll numbers weren’t great. Covid protocols were lingering. Just 11 months earlier, Trump-inspired citizens had assaulted police officers to forcibly enter the U.S. Capitol and stop the constitutionally mandated process to count Electoral College votes. It was a dodgy time.
What if the worst happened and Kamala Harris became president? I thought. How could we keep the calm and ensure she had the legitimacy to govern?
Harry Truman was having a cocktail with House Speaker Sam Rayburn when FDR died. He was sworn in by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Harlan F. Stone at the White House. I imagined if Harris was in Washington, she would be sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts. Perfect.
If Harris was traveling, there wouldn’t be time to get back to DC and she might need to be sworn in on the road. That’s what happened in Dallas in 1963, when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in on Air Force I with Jackie Kennedy at his side in a bloody suit. It was a powerful visual statement of steadiness and continuity in the face of tragedy for the country. But the judge who swore Johnson in, Sarah T. Hughes, the U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas was chosen at Johnson’s behest. There was no protocol, just the judgement of the people on that plane and ultimately Johnson.
If – God forbid – something happened to Joe Biden and Harris had to step in, the legitimacy conveyed by those first images of her would be critical. She would be the first woman of color in the Oval Office, and she wasn’t very popular. That photo would have to minimize the crazy conspiracists on the internet and stand the test of time. I was worried some might believe it poetic for the first woman of color president to be sworn in by a Democratic woman or a person of color. I believed that would be a mistake.
Before I even got a White House badge, I called a friend and asked for help. I needed a list of all Republican appointed federal judges in the country. I believed Harris should be sworn in by a Republican judge, preferably a White one, and if possible, a White male one. This is still America.
I believed my idea was right before I went to the White House. After watching President Trump target diversity as a MAGA enemy – I know it was.
Note: I do appreciate the NY Post using this photo of a younger and thinner me from 2020, before I worked for Harris. Thanks guys!
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Thanks for sharing your perspective. There were many crucial moments that we all experienced. This puts a little context to those emotions and experiences.