Dan McLaughlin of National Review Online ponders Vice President Kamala Harris’ approach to her role as the Biden administration’s point person on the Southern border.
It really requires a heart of stone not to laugh uproariously at today’s report from CNN by Priscilla Alvarez and Natasha Bertrand entitled “Vice President Harris’ team tries to distance her from fraught situation at the border”:
In the weeks since the President asked her to take charge of immigration from Central America, Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff have sought to make one thing clear: She does not manage the southern border. Two White House officials familiar with the dynamic said Harris and her aides have emphasized internally that they want to focus on conditions in Central America that push migrants to the US southern border, as President Joe Biden tasked her to do. …
… Standard cautions about anonymously sourced journalism apply here, but the frantic effort to disassociate Harris from what Biden said she’d be doing is consistent with White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s “clarifying” about Harris’s role in late April “that her focus is not on the border” but “on addressing the root causes in the Northern Triangle,” as well as being consistent with Harris refusing to visit the border (allegedly due to “COVID issues” or the risk of disruption of a vice presidential visit) and going 69 days without holding a press conference since Biden’s announcement. …
… The Democratic Party sure has come a long way from “the buck stops here.” This administration is visibly desperate to avoid images of what is happening at the border, to the point of blocking congressional Republicans from investigating firsthand the conditions in which migrants are being held. Harris clearly wants to be able to just organize a list of résumé-building “accomplishments,” rather than be judged on whether those things actually have any tangible results. …
