‘Apprentice’ Kamala Harris carves out growing diplomatic role under Biden

There are signs, however, that Harris is carving out her own growing diplomatic role.

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Harris’s early one-on-one with Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron of France, a traditional and significant ally, suggests that she’ll play an important role, said Joel Goldstein, author of The White House Vice Presidency: The Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden. “The relationship with France goes back to the Revolutionary War. And it’s a country that is obviously a key member of NATO and a key European ally.”

“They are not having her start off with a relatively insignificant country.”

Speaking to the annual Munich Security Conference virtually on Friday, Biden signaled his plans to reestablish global connections after former President Donald Trump’s “America first” doctrine.

The president’s “first love is foreign policy,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said earlier this month, putting a finer point on the new chief executive’s longstanding focus.

Since taking office, Harris has spoken to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and to World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and will meet regularly with Antony Blinken, a longtime Biden foreign policy aide now serving as secretary of state.

Harris’s time in the Senate on the Select Committee on Intelligence and Homeland Security Committee prepared her to take point on the world stage, said Lechelt.

Harris’s role may look different from Biden’s as vice president, or even Mondale’s. As a U.S. senator, she made two official trips overseas, visiting Israel, Jordan, and Afghanistan.

“The Mondale model envisions the vice president as a general across-the-board adviser and as a troubleshooter for the president on things that matter,” Goldstein said, who explained that it is premised on the idea that to be an effective adviser, “you’ve got to be in the room, you’ve got to have access to the president, you’ve got to get the information the president gets, you have to have staff support to help you analyze things.”

Like the president, “the vice president doesn’t have any one department that they’re responsible for, they can sort of advise by looking at the whole picture,” he added.

Most vice presidents in modern times have been involved in foreign policy, “really beginning with Vice President Richard Nixon,” Goldstein explained.

Lechelt said former President Jimmy Carter deeply integrated Mondale into the administration, including by granting him a West Wing office, holding weekly lunches with him, and “[putting] him on the inbox of everything the president reads, as well.”

President George H.W. Bush was an experienced diplomat, who served as ambassador to the United Nations, U.S. envoy to China, and director of Central Intelligence before his role as vice president and later president.

Dick Cheney led the transition for the younger George Bush’s presidency, securing key appointments for his allies, including Donald Rumsfeld to secretary of defense. His influence on the Bush White House’s national security policy was significant, particularly after 9/11, taking a seat at the National Security Council and visiting Iraq and Afghanistan numerous times.

Like Cheney, Mike Pence played a crucial role in staffing the early administration in the transition period. Under Trump, Pence became a trusted and knowledgeable voice for foreign allies, as well as for officials inside the administration, particularly on foreign affairs.

Biden, a vocal skeptic of the U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan in 2009, is credited with managing important U.S. relations during former President Barack Obama’s tenure, notably with Iraq in his first term and Ukraine in his second.

He twice chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before joining the new administration, and within weeks after being sworn in, delivered its first major foreign policy address to the Munich conference in 2009.

Biden and Harris have talked about Harris’s position being modeled on Biden’s vice presidency, but her approach could differ in key different ways, “not only because her background is different than Biden’s was but also because Biden as president is going to be different than Obama,” Goldstein said.

“What they mean is that she will be the last person in the room, she will have the chance to change the president’s mind, she will take on assignments that matter,” he added.

In 2016, Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations that “the job is so complicated now as president, that you really need someone whose judgment you trust.”

Harris may provide “a soft power advantage for the U.S.,” said John Gans, author of White House Warriors: How the National Security Council Transformed the American Way of War and chief speechwriter to former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter during the Obama administration.

“You see her in congressional hearings and think, ‘This is a person who is a logical, forceful thinker.’ And that’s a useful thing in the Situation Room, and in the Oval Office, any day of the week, and during any crisis,” Gans said. “She’s also built, as Joe Biden did and Dick Cheney did, and really, all vice presidents have done since the end of the Cold War, a formidable foreign policy team.”

On her team, Harris has appointed two Obama-era veterans. Nancy McEldowney, a former ambassador, is her national security adviser, and Philip Gordon, a former assistant secretary of state, is her deputy national security adviser.

“She’s got all the talent, and certainly, the worldliness, to play whatever role President Biden and she would like her to play in foreign policy,” said Gans.

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“It’s a smart move to make sure that Cabinet, foreign policy, and, I imagine, defense leaders, are going to, whether substantive or not, be meeting with her,” Lechelt said. “That tells people she’s someone the president values. Maybe doesn’t need, but it’s always going be hard to know exactly what’s happening between Biden and Harris.”