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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. If all went according to plan, about 10 minutes ago Vice President Kamala Harris swore in former Senator Bill Nelson as the administrator of NASA. Now, considering what's happening in this country and around the world with COVID, with racial injustice, with the climate and a whole bunch of other things, this might not seem like the biggest story for a Monday morning, right? But consider this. It was just on Saturday that Vice President Harris herself was officially named to chair the National Space Council, an agency that most presidents over the last 30 years essentially disbanded but that Biden says he will use.

It's another groundbreaking, or maybe we should say atmosphere breaking, leadership role for house as a Black and South Asian woman in a role only associated in the past with white men. It's not just about the fun stuff like Biden's goal of sending humans back to the moon, but also national security, economic development and they might even have to create a sanitation department for space one of these days, with all the floating debris that human beings are leaving up there, that's becoming a real problem. Consider this, chair of the National Space Council is just the latest job to land on the Vice President's crowded plate, which include, as listed by Politico, her leading roles in dealing with situation at the border plus diplomacy with Mexico and central America, with respect to that.

Also leading the anti-COVID vaccine hesitancy efforts, the impact of the recession on women and on Black-owned businesses, a pro-union task force that should be heading up and a push to increase broadband internet access across the country. Yet, as everyone took note of President Biden hitting his 100th day in office last week, not much has been written about the Vice President's first 100 days, but one big exception to that, an article on Politico called The Misunderstood first 100 days of Kamala Harris. With us now, the coauthor of that article, political White House correspondent and Playbook Newsletter author Eugene Daniels. Also joining us, Fordham University political science professor, Christina Greer, co-host of the FAQNYC and What's for Us Podcasts and author of the book, Black Ethnics. Christina, welcome back and Eugene, welcome to WNYC.

Christina Greer: Good morning.

Eugene Daniels: Good morning. Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Eugene, that was your story in Politico about the Vice President's misunderstood first 100 days. Who did you and what central question were you trying to answer?

Eugene Daniels: We interviewed more than a dozen current and former aides, people that are close to her and in her orbit, who know. Despite the fact that she hasn't been on the national scene for a long time, she's been moving and shaking in politics for a while. This is a lot of people that you can call and try to get at. The thing that we wanted to understand was, in the media, there is an idea that Kamala Harris is someone who is very cautious and there is another one that is typically from people who don't like her, who thinks she's overly ambitious. This overly ambitious politician, that is rife with its own sexism and racism where people who typically see her as too ambitious.

Brian Lehrer: Boy, if you're being tagged as both too cautious and too ambitious, there's a lot of perception on the part of other people going on there.

Eugene Daniels: There's a lot happening there, Brian. I think that was one of the things we want to get at, is who is she and what does she do? How does she operate? What we really found was that her focus on the first 100 days, and I think for her vice presidency, is to just focus on doing the job. It sounds like a duh, but at the same time, when you are someone who, clearly, she does have ambitions. She would probably run for president again, but her focus is to just do the job. She wants to continue to gain the trust of Joe Biden, and also she is not focused on politics. Her staff, I talked to a bunch of them trying to get them to talk about, "Do you guys talk about how this would affect 2024, 2028?" It just doesn't. I think that is the sense that we got leading out of it.

Brian Lehrer: Before we bring in Christina, one angle in your piece that was very interesting to me was about Harris being intensely focused, as part of doing her job, on winning the trust of President Biden. Doing that in what ways? Is that unusual for a vice president in their first 100 days?

Eugene Daniels: No, I don't think it's unusual at all. I think that every vice presidency, everywhere [inaudible 00:05:16] it starts like that. Especially if you look at Obama and Biden and her and Biden, they start off sniping at each other on a debate stage. One of her biggest debate moments was talking about bus segregation with Joe Biden. All of that is all in their relationship. What she wanted to do, and something someone told us is that she basically, the ethos is, "Make sure everyone in the White House complex knows I have only one priority and that is covering Joe Biden's back." That is how she thinks of it.

While it's not abnormal to try to work on gaining that trust, it does have its own issues because people think she's going to run, especially because of his age. They think that in 2024, that's going to happen. You have the right link who's been attacking her even before she took office saying she's going to be the real shadow president. They have to be even more cautious, I think, than another vice president would.

Brian Lehrer: Certainly, being political rivals and then winding up as President and Vice President, not uncommon. I'm thinking of George H. W. Bush who ran against Ronald Reagan in primaries way back in 1980, called Reaganomics voodoo economics. Pretty harsh stuff against Reagan, who wanted to be economically transformative. Then of course, George H. W. Bush got tapped to be his Vice President. It happens in both parties. It happens over time. Now Christina Greer, Biden's first 100 days got reviewed largely as, "Wow. Look how bold he's being. He's FDR, he's LBJ." Do you see Vice President Harris as also benefiting from the glow of media bestowed boldness, or is it different in her case to the extent anyone's commenting or writing about that at all?

Christina Greer: Yes. First things first, Kamala Harris is in the shadow of Joe Biden, as most vice presidents are. I think she might have a bit of a Hillary Clinton problem in the sense that if she decides to run in 2024, all of the accomplishments of Joe Biden, she will say, "We," and all the issues and policy points that people aren't happy with or feel like they either went too far or not far enough, she'll say, "I was the vice president. I was supporting Joe Biden as president. That wasn't me." When we saw Hillary Clinton defending her position as first lady, even defending her position as secretary of state.

That'll be an interesting, complex needle that Kamala Harris has to thread because she will either have to take all of the accomplishments and failings of the Biden administration, or she will try and run as her own person. That's going to be very difficult to do. Just as a side note, don't forget, Joe Biden and Barack Obama had their own little toe-to-toe on the debate stage and Joe Biden famously called Barack Obama clean, shiny and articulate. They were able to move past that and Joe Biden was a very dedicated Vice President for eight full years.

Brian Lehrer: Now listeners, were opening up the phones and we have Monday morning politics going on here. As we usually do on Monday morning, 646-435-7280. Anything you want to say or ask about Kamala Harris's first 100 days. As our guests watch a lot of developments, we might take a call or two on some other national politics that you might want to bring up, but we're giving the Vice President the spotlight here primarily for this conversation. 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Eugene, you quoted one Harris confidante saying she wants Biden's trust so that she gets a lot of authority to be actively engaged in the government.

Is the list of her responsibilities that I cited from your article, the situation at the border, vaccine hesitancy, the impact of the recession on women and on Black-owned businesses, a pro-union task force, a push to increase the broadband access, and now chairing the National Space Council. Wait, isn't that every job under the sun? Are these already signs of that trust or could a lot of them wind up being figurehead titles?

Eugene Daniels: I did. I texted one of her senior aides this weekend after they announced the National Space Council. I said, "You guys are really keeping her busy," because they are. You listed off all those things, and some of them are more politically fraught. The number one that's most politically fraught is her role leading diplomatic efforts with northern triangle countries and Mexico to get at the root causes of migration. That one, we've already seen Republicans try to paint her as the person who's handling the border crisis, and that's not the case. There's already those kinds of things.

I think that you're right, that trust has already been building, and because she has been focused on the governing aspect of it, not thinking so much about how this is going to impact her, how this is going to impact her future, and just concentrate on being, as it was put to me, Joe Biden's Joe Biden, that is easy to trust. I talked to some vice-presidential historians about this, and they say that is what vice presidents have to do. They have to convince so far the guy in charge that, "Hey, I'll do whatever you say. I'll do a good job, and I'm not here for myself." I think that is something that, one of the very few things she has in common with all the other white men that have shared her role before her.

As far as the figurehead role, I think it's hard to see her ever do something that's figure-heady because that's just not how she operates. There's that CNN documentary of her, and it was an hour-long. One of the things that I took away with this, she had just been sworn in in one of her positions, she walks into her office and there's no desk and there's no computers, but she sits down with I think a legal big yellow legal pad and starts to work just in the chair. You know what? That is the way that people talk about her, as someone who is just ready to work.

I think part of that is that's who she is. She's a lawyer by nature. She was a lawyer for most of her life, and just focusing on that aspect of things is how she's gotten to where she is. I think how her vice presidency is going to be looked at, as someone who really did just focus on Biden and had his back.

Brian Lehrer: Christina, some people have said that Biden saddled her with the border job. No political benefits could come from heading that up, only headaches. Here's a clip of the Vice President on the CBS morning show last week after being asked by Gayle King about the extent of the problem on Biden and Harris's watch and how quickly they can fix it.

Vice President Kamala Harris: Look, it's a huge problem. I'm not going to pretend it's not. It's a huge problem. Are we looking at overcrowding at the border, particularly of these kids? Yes. Should these kids be in the custody of HHS, the Health and Human Services, instead of the Border Patrol? Yes. Should we be processing these cases faster? Yes. This is, however, not going to be solved overnight.

Brian Lehrer: She's the one out there having to say that more prominently than Biden himself. Christina, how's the Vice President doing on that, as far as you can tell? How do you see the challenge, both humanitarian and policy challenges, and also politically for the Vice President?

Christina Greer: Yes, I think it's a massive challenge, largely because this is something that George W. Bush and Barrack Obama could not figure out. We know Donald Trump was wholly disinterested in figuring it out. We know that we still have the numbers, we still have children involved and, as Eugene's great piece points out implicitly and explicitly states, there's some gender and racial dynamics by having someone like Kamala Harris be the heavy for the hard decisions that will be made, especially when it comes to families and children.

I'm not the Vice President, have no desire to be the Vice President, because this policy position, I think, is a thankless one. No matter what happens, even if Kamala Harris is able to solve a significant portion of what's going on at the border, there will still be thousands, if not millions of Americans who feel as though the Democratic Party did not do enough, did not do enough quickly. If she does decide to run in 2024, we know that her opponents, very ambitious men from all across the country, will be running. Some women as well, but we know that men will not let Kamala Harris roll into the White House in 2024 at all. We know that this will be a cornerstone of their critique of her and her time in the administration.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call that's coming in on this particular challenge for the Vice President. Paula in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Christina Greer from Fordham and Eugene Daniels from Politico. Hi, Paula.

Paula: Sorry. As I understand, this is somewhat of a misstatement. My understanding is she's not in charge of the problems at the border at all. What she's in charge of are the root problems and the immigrants coming from the Central American countries, and that's why she's talking to them and Mexico. She's not at the border, which everyone keeps asking, 'why isn't she at the border?'

Brian Lehrer: Right.

Paula: That's my question, why are we all discussing her problems at the border when I don't think they are her problems at the border?

Brian Lehrer: Paula, thank you very much. Certainly, Eugene, part of her explicit task here is to head diplomacy with Mexico and the northern triangle Central American countries, as you mentioned in the article. I think you did say also, the border itself, the situation, the kinds of things she just listed in that clip. Could you clear that up for our caller and for everybody?

Eugene Daniels: Sure. I'm sorry if there was any confusion from my statement, but the thing that she is dealing with, as I stated and is in the piece, is the diplomatic relationships between the northern triangle countries and Mexico. To get at, like you said, those parts of migration, basically why do people leave their homes? Something she continues to say is, "People don't want to leave their countries out of fear at all. People want to go on vacation, but they don't want to leave and never come back." You're 100% right and I think what you're seeing, Paula, and getting at is the fact that in the media there has been a conflation, mostly because of how bad the situation is at the border.

You're looking at the kids in cages and all of that stuff that looks very similar to what we saw under the Trump administration. People are conflating those two things. I don't know that we've done it here, but I think that is one of the central issues that she's going to have to deal with, is that, how do you make sure that she is separated out of that. I think that they know that there was some confusion. I talked to one of her senior staff, some of her senior staff, and they said the rollout could have been smoother. They know that the way that they explained that, it wasn't as clear.

It's going to continue to be their job to let people know she's not handling anything at the border, she's not going to be reuniting families. Her aspect of immigration is something completely different. I think, as President Biden essentially have mostly focused on COVID and jobs and infrastructure for his first 100 days and not so much on immigration, that is going to continue to happen. I think some of that is racialized and is about her gender. You saw House Republicans put her face on a milk carton saying she was missing at the border, something that I don't think you would have seen have she been a white man in that role.

There are aspects of that, where it's going to be tough for her in the administration to really explain what she's doing. They have to do it now to set up the roadblock or the roadway for people to understand what she's going to be handling.

Brian Lehrer: Sammy in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sammy, thanks for calling in today.

Sammy: Thanks for taking my call. She's the Iron Lady. I'm of South Asian descent and I find her to be the first South Asian descent person in power in America who's actually loyal, unlike Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google. She stood her ground against Feinstein when she was the AG of California. She's a force behind Biden to muscle through all these programs in the senate with a 50/50 split. I hope she can get us Medicare for all, and climate change deals in the Senate. I hope she followed Biden to be the President after four years.

Brian Lehrer: Sammy, thank you very much, and keep calling us. Building off that call, Christina, another position Harris finds herself in is in being a Black and South Asian woman Vice President at a time of racial issues being very explicitly on the table. Last week after the Senate's only Black Republican Tim Scott gave the nationally televised response to Biden's nationally televised speech. Scott stated the US is not a racist country. Harris was made to respond to that on Thursday morning on ABC's Good Morning America. Here's how she handled it.

Vice President Kamala Harris: First of all, no, I don't think America is a racist country, but we also do have to speak truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today. I applaud the President for always having the ability and the courage, frankly, to speak the truth about it. He spoke what we know from the intelligence community, one of the greatest threats to our national security is domestic terrorism manifested by white supremacists. These are issues that we must confront, and it does not help to heal our country, to unify us as a people, to ignore the realities of that. I think the President has been outstanding and a real national leader on the issue of saying, "Let's confront the realities and let's deal with it, knowing we all have so much more in common than what separates us." The idea is that we want to unify the country, but not without speaking truth and requiring accountability as appropriate.

Brian Lehrer: Christina, how much of a burden and how much of an opportunity to work for progress do you see it as for Harris to be asked about race in contexts like that?

Christina: She will continuously be asked about race. That's what's frustrating and exhausting about the framing of the conversation. It's like, listen, Brian, you talked about this for years. We are in a nation that is predicated on white supremacy, anti-Black racism, patriarchy, and racialized capitalism. These are facts. They are not my opinions. Even the question of, "Is America racist?" It's like we have two eyes and two ears, like we can see it. Tim Scott laid out all the ways that the country was racist and then said it wasn't racist. The fact that Kamala Harris has to carry the water in this conversation is exhausting, when we should be talking about how do we move beyond Derek Chauvin's trial and all the other trials that should have happened if all of the Black Americans who have been killed at the hands of police, or vigilantes or Asian-American violence that we're seeing today, or still processing January 6th.

The framing of it to me is ridiculous because we see this in our workplaces all the time, "Let's ask the people of color, let's ask the Black people, is this environment not equitable?" No, it's not. That's what we've been screaming from the rooftops. Obviously her response was measured because if she had said anything else, Fox News and the like would have taken that for the next four years and played it on loop. I think the question is actually ridiculous because we have all of the evidence, we've got 400 years of it to say that, yes, Tim Scott spoke incorrectly. He basically lied and he laid out his own argument for himself and then said the opposite.

Brian Lehrer: You want to weigh in on this too, Eugene?

Eugene Daniels: I think that's key. Also what's key is that what Republicans are doing and have been doing for this last 100 days and really for years, but really if we're talking about this presidency and vice presidency, is trying to fight these, they call them the cultural wars. These kinds of things, these things about race, things about, "These people are going to take this from you." That has been happening for some time. You have Tim Scott, one, I think the thing that was really interesting about Tim Scott's speech that on the focus on race, the thing that he's supposed to do is rebut what the President just did.

President Biden did not give this 80-minute speech on race. The things that he was hitting Biden no weren't in that speech. What that tells you is that Republicans want Democrats to have to explain their issues with racism in this country. They want them to continue to have to explain it because to them Republican voters and maybe some independents, maybe even some moderate Democrats, don't want to face some of these hard truths. They don't want to face some of the hard truths about white supremacy being according to intel. The intel agencies, not me, and not any one else, but according to them, that white supremacy is a danger to this country and is terrorism.

It's domestic terrorism. That all rising tides does not lift all boats, something that we know from history. That is what Democrats are working to convince people of in this country and Republicans are not. I think that is what you're seeing here play out is not just that, like was just pointing it out that Tim Scott talked about how racist things happen to him and then said this country wasn't racist. What they're trying to differentiate is, "You are not racist." They're calling you the human racist and I think that is what Democrats aren't really doing. They're not saying, "This person is racist. This human is racist." They are talking about the system, and I think that's a little bit more difficult to convince people of than calling a person racist.

Brian Lehrer: I felt part of a contradiction in Scott's speech was he pretty much said, "Of course I've experienced personal racism. I'm a Black man in America." He didn't use those words, but that was the implication of the way he told those stories and then flipped it to say, "Wait, don't call America a racist country." How do those two fit together? Eugene, your article quotes, people close to Harris who say Biden turned to her for guidance and followed it on some of his actions around the murder of George Floyd. Can you give us any details of that?

Eugene Daniels: Yes, I'm not sure if people saw, but when they called the family of George Floyd and he wanted to hear from her. It does seem that he trusts her. He talks to her about every issue. They talk about how she's the last person in the room, which is the famous thing that every Vice President wants to be since Walter Mondale, is to be that senior, senior, senior, and last advisor for every decision-making. Part of that is the police reforms. She was a prosecutor, she was a district attorney. She talks about these issues quite a bit. She actually was one of the drafters of the George Floyd Justice and Policing act. She has a lot of teeth in the game on this.

Both of them watch this together. They watched the verdict together and they called the family and he turned to her and said, "She wants to say something. The Vice President wants to say something." I think that is showing how much he trusts her. He knows this is in her wheelhouse, though it hasn't been put in her "Portfolio." They're concentrating on working and allowing Congress to continue their negotiations and also the DOJ to do what they can as an agency to tackle some of these issues. I think it, again, shows that he trusts her more than I think people thought would be possible this early and considering how contentious the primary debates got.

I think it's hard for people who aren't politicians, and even sometimes their spouses, to understand how they just get over the sniping that happens, but it's always happened. It happened with Barack Obama and Biden. It's been happening for years. Every time everyone's surprised that they're able to get over it, but they really do. They just like get over it and move on.

Brian Lehrer: With Eugene Daniels from Politico and Christina Greer from Fordham. Tricia in Tampa, Florida, you're on WNYC. Hi Tricia.

Tricia: Hi, good morning. I just found, Dr. Greer's initial comments comparing Hillary Clinton to Vice President Harris a bit off-putting, because I feel like comparing what the current Vice President is doing to someone who has not served in that role, was a First Lady, it diminishes the fact that she's doing exactly and will be doing if she runs again, exactly what every other man in that role has done, which is to have to compare their time as Vice President supporting the President's policies to their own policies. I find, particularly coming from a woman, it dismisses the fact that she is in that job, doing that exact same job that every man has ever done and will end up doing it in much the same way as far as the comparison she made.

I think when we bring Hillary Clinton into it, we also bring into it a huge amount of unnecessary baggage that gets hoisted on Vice President Harris.

Brian Lehrer: Christina?

Christina Greer: I'd like to thank her for making my point, because the point is such that because Kalama Harris is a woman, because she is a woman of color, because she is Black, she will have a certain set of obstacles that Hillary Clinton had when she's running for the same office as several other white men who are challengers. Yes, when Hillary Clinton ran for office she was not an elected official as the role of a First lady, but she also initially in her 2008 run, tried to say, when Bill Clinton did great things that people liked, "That was we, that was us." When people had issues with Bill Clinton's record, "Well, that was my husband. I was the First Lady and I wasn't involved."

We've seen this time and time again, though, with Vice Presidents trying to distance themselves from their presidential predecessors. Kamala Harris is going to have, I think, extra obstacles because she is a woman, because she is a woman of color, because, specifically, she's a Black woman, if and when she runs for office in 2024. That's the comparison, because we still clearly have a very large gender issue when it comes to leadership in this country. There are many Americans, women included, white women specifically, when we look at their voting patterns, where they cannot fathom a woman in an executive level leadership.

Brian Lehrer: Trisha, thank you for the-- Go ahead, Eugene.

Eugene Daniels: Just to quickly add to what Dr. Greer said. I think what something that's really important is that Joe Biden himself as Vice President, when he was running for President this time around, had to do this exact same thing. He was called on to defend the immigration policies of the Obama administration, he was called on to talk about the drone strikes. He was called on to talk about Syria. He was called on to talk about Libya. I think every single Vice President, Dr. Greer is completely right, every single Vice President has to, if they decide to run for President,, has to answer for every single thing.

They try to sift through all the good stuff, like, "I told him to pull out of Afghanistan and during the Osama raid I did this." At the same time, this is going to be so much more difficult for someone like Kamala Harris for all the reasons Dr. Greer laid out. I don't think the comparison is to Hillary Clinton, who was also a Secretary of State and a Senator after she was First Lady, but the way that the media portrays these women, and that is exactly what we're going to see. Dr. Greer is 100% right. We are going to see people say, "The border crisis for the first 100 days was terrible. That's all on Kamala Harris." We've already seen it. She's going to have to answer for things in a way that even Joe Biden for Obama did not have to answer for when he ran in 2020.

Brian Lehrer: Patricia, thank you for asking the question and please do call us again. We're almost out of time. Eugene, I see that your White House correspondent beat includes the Vice President, but also the Second Gentleman, as I think the Vice President's husband's title officially is. How were his first hundred days?

Eugene Daniels: His first hundred days were under the radar a little bit. I'm working on a story right now about them. He's been very busy, Doug Emhoff is the former entertainment lawyer out of California, very successful. What he's done now is something that I think I've talked to quite a few people about it, and they say it is a good example to see high powered man just support his wife, something, unfortunately in 2021, we don't see enough examples of. What he's been doing is supporting the administration in every way he can. There were all hands on deck for the during COVID relief, so you didn't hear a lot from him. Then he started hitting the road selling that COVID relief plan, and he's still been on the road. I think he did 10 trips or something.

Him and the First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden, have traveled the most out of the top four because they want make it very clear that the President and Vice President are working. The First Lady and the Second Gentlemen have taken on quite a bit of the travel selling things, but also trying to figure out, he's trying to figure out that role for himself. He's the first man to be a spouse of a Vice President or President. I think they're still working to figure out what does that look like and what does he want to tackle? Right now I think their only focus is to do whatever the administration wants them to do as they struggle with all these crises that we have at the same time.

Brian Lehrer: Christina, before you go, let me raise a whole other topic just for one question for now. I don't know if you're on the details of this yet, but it's certainly on a topic that we've talked about a lot, which is the push to restrict voting rights in state after state, after the 2020 election. The headline in the New York Times was With Florida Bill, Republicans Continue Unrelenting Push to Restrict Voting. To my eye, just reading this list of bullet points, but I don't really know so you tell me, this looks worse than the Georgia law. Just reading from this Times article, the restrictions include limiting voting by mail, curtailing the use of drop-boxes and prohibiting actions to help people waiting in line to vote while imposing penalties on those who do not follow the rules.

With the limiting voting by mail, which I don't think was so much in the Georgia bill, but you tell me, is Florida's even worse? Do you have an opinion yet?

Christina Greer: I'm not surprised at all, Brian, because if we look at the Florida gubernatorial races, the past few cycles, Democrats and Republicans have been separated by basically one percentage point, if you remember Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis. We also know that Ron DeSantis has been a very loyal supporter of Donald Trump and all of his theories about election fraud and why we need to restrict voting for all Americans, specifically people of color, specifically Democrats. This bill is not surprising, it's not surprising since we know Ron DeSantis has future ambitions. We have two Republican senators that are onboard and have been supporting the baseless theories of the former president.

Sadly, Brian, I think if we compare Georgia and Florida and all the other bills that are coming up in states across the country, I think they're going to only get more aggressive as we look forward to 2024.

Brian Lehrer: That, unfortunately, is where we leave it for today with Christina Greer, political science professor at Fordham University co-host of the podcast, FAQNYC, and What's for Us pod and author of the book, Black Ethnics and Eugene Daniels, who is really busy. I don't know how you're prolific as you are writing the well-read newsletter every day, being on that team, the Politico Playbook, and putting out as much content as you are as Politico White House correspondent. Thank you both so much for coming on today.

Christina Greer: Thanks Brian.

Eugene Daniels: Thank you so much.

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