How did Kamala Harris go from being a rising star to a damp squib?

Remember Kamala Harris? Just a few years ago the first female vice-president of the US was surrounded by fanfare, splashed on the cover of Vogue and being feted as the future of the Democratic party. For a brief moment, it seemed plausible that Joe Biden, the oldest inaugurated president in history, might serve just a single term and then gracefully hand the reins over to his VP. “Ms Harris now finds herself the most clearly positioned heir to the White House,” the New York Times mused after the 2020 election.

Four years on and Harris’s position is a lot less clear. Indeed, you could be forgiven for forgetting that the vice-president even exists. And, to be fair, that’s because part of her job is ensuring she doesn’t steal the spotlight from her boss. Very few vice-presidents shine in the role; there is a reason Teddy Roosevelt once opined that the position “is not a stepping stone to anything except oblivion”. Biden, of course, was an exception to that. Still, he jokingly complained that being number two was “a bitch” back in 2014, when he was VP.

Even bearing in mind the inherent limitations of the position, however, Harris’s vice-presidency has been a damp squib. Not even Harris’s inner circle seem enthused by the 59-year-old: the early days of her vice-presidency were plagued with headlines about dysfunction and infighting in her office. Harris may have had a trailblazing career, but few people seem to take her seriously – not even allies dependent on US government aid. A recent report by the Washington Post, for example, suggests that the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was irritated when Harris recently asked him to stop attacking oil refineries in Russia, and proceeded to ignore her because he wasn’t sure