Democrats in Overdrive to Burnish Harris Foreign Policy Record
(Bloomberg) -- Democrats moved quickly to project Kamala Harris as a foreign-policy heavyweight, looking to neutralize a Republican attack line and address voter concerns about her ability to tackle the world’s thorniest challenges.
Most Read from Bloomberg
What Initial Polling Data Show About the Trump-Harris Matchup
Harris Targets Trump by Raising Threat of ‘Extreme’ Project 2025
Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised her as a “leading voice” who asks “penetrating questions” in Situation Room deliberations. A chorus of former senior officials agreed, signing a letter that said she would require no “on-the-job training.”
“Over the past three and a half years, Vice President Harris has played an integral role in restoring US global leadership around the world,” the group said.
The moves seek to boost Harris’s image before she gets her biggest diplomatic test yet, when she’s set to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday. While hewing closely to President Joe Biden’s policy, Harris has been slightly more critical of Israel than her boss, whose support has been unwavering.
That meeting may give voters their first hint of whether Harris, 59, will run her campaign entirely in line with Biden’s or seek to differentiate herself from the president. It will also mark the start of her efforts to emerge from Biden’s shadow on foreign policy, an area where she has far less experience and has not been a decision-maker.
Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza has deeply divided Americans and failed to appease anger from voters sympathetic to either Israel or the Palestinians. Registered voters in seven swing states trust Donald Trump more than Biden on matters ranging from China to Ukraine to Israel, according to a Bloomberg News-Morning Consult poll conducted before Biden announced he would drop his bid for a second term.
“Before Biden stepped aside, it looked to me like Trump had an advantage” in voter perception of effectiveness dealing with global challenges, said Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Harris could benefit from having some space to show independence of mind on foreign policy.”
Under Biden, she was put in charge of addressing the so-called “root causes” of migration in Central America. She also traveled to Singapore and Vietnam in 2021, hosted Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at her official residence at the Naval Observatory in 2022, and spoke for the Biden administration at the Munich Security Conference this year.
That’s more experience dealing with global leaders than Biden’s predecessors dating back to Bill Clinton. Even so, Biden has set administration strategy, relying on his decades of experience and the advice of an inner-circle including National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Blinken.
Biden arrived to the presidency with years-long relationships with many world leaders such as Netanyahu. Without that same history, Harris has shown a willingness to hear from the experts around her, according to a person familiar with the internal deliberations of both, who asked not be named without permission to speak publicly.
Harris will often begin preparation sessions for meetings with world leaders by asking advisers for the one or two top objectives for the meeting, and end them by asking if anyone has dissenting views or if everyone feels comfortable with the plan discussed and agreed upon, the person said.
While Biden is also open to input, he has more concretely formed views on Europe and the Middle East from his work in the 1990s and the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Biden first won election to the Senate during the throes of the Vietnam War, while Harris didn’t arrive to Congress until 2017.
“You don’t have to know anything about what her specific beliefs are, but her career experiences are different, and that can’t but affect her view of the world,” said Samuel Charap, a foreign policy expert at Rand Corp.
Republican critics cast Harris as a radical leftist who failed to secure the border or stop illegal immigration. But Biden asked her to deal with developments in Central America, not border enforcement. Her early career, as well as a presidential run in 2020, show her slotted well within the mainstream of her party on most major world issues — from Russia and Iran to China and trade.
Harris has been more critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, using stronger language earlier than Biden to denounce civilian deaths and condemn violence perpetrated by extremist settlers in the West Bank.
In March, Harris called for an “immediate cease-fire” for six weeks to facilitate a hostage deal while speaking at a commemorative event held at a civil-rights landmark in Selma, Alabama. Although the policy was standard, the word choice marked a notable shift in the administration’s rhetoric on the war.
“Only time will tell with respect to exactly the voice that Vice President Harris brings to the campaign trail,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, told reporters on Tuesday. “She has expressed very, very serious concern about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”
--With assistance from Akayla Gardner.
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
