President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were all hugs and smiles during the bipartisan infrastructure bill signing ceremony Monday amid reports of growing White House tensions.
Harris and her allies are said to be frustrated with her assignments, believing she has not been set up for success by the administration. Others in the West Wing are irritated by her performance in office and, especially, her staff.
But none of this acrimony was on display as Biden and Harris joined together to affectionately celebrate a key legislative victory on infrastructure. The two walked out of the White House with arms linked.
“And here is what I know to be true, Mr. President: You are equal parts believer and builder,” Harris said. “And because you are, we are all better off. On behalf of our nation: Thank you, Mr. President.”
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Biden in turn thanked Harris first when crediting “everyone who helped make this happen.” He then made a strange joke about first lady Jill Biden and Harris’s husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
Harris, who suffers from even lower job approval ratings than the president, was sent abroad to help smooth over a diplomatic row with France over a nuclear submarine dealing with the United Kingdom and Australia. But she returned home to a CNN article that detailed extensive finger-pointing between Biden’s and Harris’s inner circles.
“Defenders and people who care for Harris are getting frantic,” CNN reported. White House press secretary Jen Psaki took to Twitter on Sunday night to defend Harris.
Psaki tweeted that Harris was a “vital partner” to Biden who is also “a bold leader who has taken on key, important challenges facing the country.” She reiterated her defense of Harris at Monday’s White House press briefing.
“But I can tell you that there’s been a lot of reports out there, and they don’t reflect his view or our experience with the vice president,” Psaki told reporters after declining to answer whether Biden would at some point endorse her for president.
Republicans mocked the lovey-dovey tone of the infrastructure bill signing, with one GOP rapid response official tweeting they had been told to “look like [they] don’t despise each other.”
“Now make sure you look like you don’t despise each other” pic.twitter.com/xEVmYyW7pv
— Jake Schneider (@jacobkschneider) November 15, 2021
The tensions between Biden and Harris loyalists stem in part from the fact that there is uncertainty about who will be the Democratic standard-bearer in 2024. Biden has publicly and privately insisted he will run for reelection — but there are doubts stemming from the fact that he will be over 80, and his popularity has already plummeted in recent months.
Harris also criticized Biden’s 1970s position on forced busing to achieve racial balance in public schools as a way of undercutting his civil rights record when the two were rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019.
There has also been a racial element to the conflict between Biden and Harris loyalists, with the latter group seeing the White House as being more willing to come to the aid of white Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg during a public relations flap than the black and Asian woman serving as vice president.
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Infrastructure has been the Biden-Harris administration’s biggest bipartisan win since taking office, but they hope it will also pave the way to the enactment of a large climate and social welfare bill that they intend to advance solely with Democratic votes. This will require the use of the reconciliation process, and Harris’s tiebreaking vote, in the 50-50 Senate.
Harris did face one indignity during the signing ceremony, however. An announcer named a different speaker when Harris was supposed to begin her own remarks. “In a moment,” the vice president said with a laugh. “Please have a seat.”
