Kamala beyond the stereotype

Book review of Kamala's Way: An American Life

All the Mylapore mamis and Chetpet chitties who rushed through their kolam (rangoli) and put their arachu-vitta sambar  (sambar with coconut) to simmer on the back burner, hoping to catch US Vice President Kamala Harris flash some sign of her Tam-Brahm origins at her inauguration last month must have sighed in disappointment. There was no sign of kanjivaram on her person, no vaira thodu (seven-diamond earrings), not even a mookkutti (nose pin)!

But then, Kamala Harris shouldn’t be blamed for stereotyping Kamala Harris, as Dan Morain points out. She may say she likes idlis. But from the book it seems her favourite food is people who come between her and her ambition.

But that’s just one side. Mr Morain portrays a highly competent, successful if abrasive negotiator who knows the best can be the enemy of the good and knows when to retreat and how to make it look like victory. The book is neither sentimental about Ms Harris nor dewy-eyed about her struggle to become what she is. It is the story of a quintessential American politician.

Ms Harris’s life —her Indian and Jamaican origins, her academic father’s Left-wing orientation and her medical researcher mother’s indomitable courage in bringing up two daughters singlehanded in a foreign country — is chronicled in her autobiography. 

Mr Morain, a seasoned journalist, makes a frank disclosure — that when the book was written, Ms Harris was in the middle of her campaign with little time to talk to him. What makes the book utterly absorbing is his understanding of politics in California, both Democrat and Republican, and how Ms Harris made her place in it, finally reaching national politics.

A lot of what Ms Harris is today, she owes, according to Mr Morain, to former San Francisco Mayor, Willie Brown, 30 years older than her, whom she dated from 1994 to 1996. Even after the relationship ended (because Mr Brown wouldn’t leave his wife, Mr Morain says), the veteran politician opened many doors for Ms Harris. She attended the Academy awards with him and flew with him on the private jet to New York — on an invitation from a billionaire named Donald Trump. “The jet was gilded, had valuable paintings on its cabin walls and had notes left for Trump by his then wife, Marla Maples,” writes Mr Morain. Later, when Mr Brown was being investigated for corruption, Ms Harris said of him: “I refuse to design my campaign around criticising Willie Brown for the sake of appearing to be independent when I am independent of him…His career is over; I will be alive and kicking for the next 40 years. I do not owe him a thing.”

Kamala’s Way: An American Life

Author: Dan Morain

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Pages: 256; Price: £ 20

The same ruthlessness was in evidence when it came to Barack Obama and Joe Biden — both of whom had helped her along at various times. When she ran for president challenging Mr Biden (a campaign she had to call off because she couldn’t raise enough money), and a reporter asked her if she would continue Mr Obama’s legacy, her haughty answer was: “I have my own legacy.” In 2019, her public attack on Joe Biden, of being racist, seemed to hurt him personally, because he told a TV interviewer: “I thought we were friends and I hope we still will be.”

Ever the pragmatic politician, when Mr Biden invited her to become his running mate, Ms Harris made her peace. By then she had achieved a lot: A term as a Senator and an Attorney General (AG). Mr Morain goes deep into her tenure as the state’s senior-most law officer, and notes her achievements — but also her compromises. Although a lifelong opponent of capital punishment, she did not take a stand on initiatives to abolish the death penalty while she was AG in 2012 and 2016, because it did not suit her politically. Similarly, when it came to the politics around abortion, it was not Ms Harris, but her successor, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who filed a criminal case against a pro-life “journalist” for surreptitiously recording and releasing selectively, discussions between women and the Planned Parenthood Federation that believes a woman has the right to control her own body.

The same Kamala Harris, as Senator, reduced putative Supreme Court judge Brett Kavanaugh to stammering jelly when she cross-questioned him fiercely about his stand of women’s rights and abortion and asked him: “Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?” Of course there aren’t, says Mr Morain. Ms Harris knew that, even when she was AG. She didn’t do anything about it.

Mr Morain also records the other side of Ms Harris: Her deep loyalty to those close to her. Nothing could come between her and her sister Maya. Even when no one was looking, when no political gain was involved, she walked the extra mile to do the right thing. Tyrone Gayle was her press secretary. He had gone through one bout of cancer and thought he had beaten it. But 13 days before the mid-term election, he fell grievously ill. She cancelled all her appointments, took a flight to be at his side in the hospital and stayed with him, finally bidding him goodbye.

Mr Morain’s book does not explore Kamala Harris’s geo-strategic vision, so we don’t really know where India figures in it. But the one thing she’s not, is a stereotype. To underestimate her would be a mistake.