I know from my experience managing Vice President Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000 that running for president as vice president is an underappreciated challenge. A vice president is expected to never disagree with the president in public and must make the president look good without claiming personal credit for accomplishments. Yet when running for president, a vice president gets no credit from opponents for administration successes, but instead is blamed for supposed administration failures.
As a former vice president, President Biden understands the importance of the job and has empowered Vice President Kamala Harris. Yet because some of the most important work of a vice president takes place outside of public view, as a top confidential adviser to the president, it is difficult to differentiate the V.P.’s achievements from those of the president. The two function as a team, with the president as the final decision maker. This has created tensions for Ms. Harris: Some voters say she has been “invisible” as vice president and are skeptical or even ignorant of her abilities and accomplishments, while some political strategists say she needs to differentiate her policy priorities from Mr. Biden’s so that she puts meat on the idea that she is “turning the page” on the past and is a change candidate.
Ms. Harris has played a key role in the top achievements of the Biden-Harris administration to: cut health insurance and prescription drug costs; fight climate change; impose a minimum tax on multibillion-dollar corporations; crack down on wealthy tax cheats; fund free Covid vaccinations and treatments; send checks to most Americans and small businesses to help them deal with the pandemic; improve roads, bridges, mass transit, rail services, airports, ports, waterways and energy systems nationwide; reduce unauthorized immigration in July across the U.S.-Mexico border below the level when Mr. Trump left office and invest almost $53 billion to expand U.S. manufacturing of semiconductor chips.
The vice president has worked with Mr. Biden to reduce inflation and create almost 16 million jobs. Mr. Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic resulted in the loss of about three million American jobs during his term of office — the most job losses of any president since record-keeping began in 1939.
When a vice president running for president expands on the administration’s plans — like giving all first-time home buyers $25,000 in down payment assistance or increasing the tax deduction for start-ups from $5,000 to $50,000 — opponents ask why the vice president didn’t pursue the idea earlier. Mr. Trump and his campaign are leveling this attack against Ms. Harris today.
How absurd! President Lyndon Johnson gave us landmark civil rights and voting rights laws, Medicare, Medicaid and many other outstanding measures. Should Johnson have been attacked for not doing all this when he was President John F. Kennedy’s vice president? Of course not. Creating a more perfect Union is a never-ending task. Presidents build on the achievements of their predecessors.