Years before Barack Obama urged voters to make Kamala Harris the first female vice president at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, he took heat for praising her looks and then apologized for doing so.
“You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant, and she is dedicated, and she is tough, and she is exactly what you’d want in anybody who is administering the law and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake,” the then-president said at an April 2013 fundraiser outside San Francisco about Harris, who was the California attorney general. “She also happens to be, by far, the best-looking attorney general in the country.”
“It’s true! Come on,” Obama said as the crowd laughed.
The comments prompted allegations of sexism. Salon writer Joan Walsh wrote that her “stomach turned over” when she heard the comment.
“Most women in public life have a complex relationship with their appearance, whether they’re as attractive as Harris or not,” she wrote, suggesting that “calling her ‘by far, the toughest attorney general’ would have had a better ring.”
In the Los Angeles Times, Robin Abcarian wrote that Obama may have been “more wolfish than sexist” but that “this may be a little problem he needs to work on.”
The next day, then-White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the president called Harris later that night and “apologized for the remark.”
Carney said that Obama “did not want in any way to diminish the attorney general’s professional accomplishments and her capabilities,” adding that the president “fully recognizes the challenges women continue to face in the workplace and that they should not be judged based on appearance.”
A spokesman for Harris said that day that she and Obama “have been friends for many years” and “had a great conversation yesterday, and she strongly supports him.”
During her presidential campaign, the now-California senator touted her long relationship with Obama, telling voters about knocking on doors in Iowa ahead of the Democratic caucuses in 2008.
Obama was slated to be the final speaker on the third night of the Democratic National Convention, but he reportedly suggested that he speak just before Harris rather than right after her, putting Harris in a more prominent speaking position.
