Biden Makes a Choice

Kamala Who?

Joe Biden will win this year’s presidential election. As a conservative, I’m not overly excited about it, but I will bow to the inevitable. Donald Trump continues to be his own worst enemy. I still like his positions on foreign policy and economics, but he goes out of his way to make enemies. If he would keep his mouth shut, Republicans may have had a chance, but his tweets have alienated the press, independent voters, and many of his supporters. The Republicans who cling to Trump’s coattails will go down in flame, and we will be ruled by liberal Democrats for the next four years. It could have been worse. We could have been stuck with Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. Yes, I would like someone more conservative, but Joe Biden is what we got. He said early on in his campaign, he would choose a woman, preferably a black woman, for his Vice President. He chose Kamala Harris.

Given Biden’s age and medical history, the voters should take a good long look at her credentials; she will be a shaky heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world. Biden will be 78 yeas old when he is inaugurated. That was Ronald Reagan’s age when he left office, and he was thought to be suffering from dementia during most of his second term. Very few chief executives of anything serve into their eighties. There is a good chance Kamala Harris will need to take over from Biden at some point. Other than filling Biden’s requisites of female and black, who is she, and what are her qualifications?

The headlines said that the nomination of Kamala Harris as a Vice-Presidential candidate was a history making event because she is the first “woman of color” (whatever that means) to be nominated for Vice President. I’m not sure what is so earth shattering. Geraldine Ferraro was a woman. We even elected a “person of color” as President just a few years ago. I look forward to the day when gender and skin color are no longer newsworthy characteristics to describe candidates. Harris’s parents were both upper class immigrants who met and married while in graduate school at Cal Berkley. Her mother was the daughter of a diplomat in India. After receiving her advanced degree in eccrinology, she became noteworthy in breast cancer research. Her father was from Jamaica. He studied economics in London before receiving his doctorate from Berkley. He spent several years as Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison before his retirement. Her pedigree looks good to me.

Harris grew up in California, received her bachelor’s degree from Howard University in Washington D. C. then her law degree from Hastings College in San Francisco. Her first job was an Assistant District Attorney in the Bay area where she served for 13 years. She became the District Attorney of San Francisco in 2004 and the Attorney General of California in 2011, before being elected to the Senate in 2017. She was an aggressive prosecutor with an outstanding record, although she received some criticism from civil rights groups for her high number of wrongful convictions. She has limited experience at the national level, but if I had to choose between a prosecutor and a defense attorney, I would opt for the prosecutor.

Her voting record in the Senate is a concern. A mixed pattern of votes for military appropriations leaves me confused, but her record on confirmation of judges and other presidential appointments leaves no doubt that she opposed all nominees just because President Trump nominated them. Our country is polarized into two opposing camps, neither of which will compromise. I would like to see a candidate who will heal, but I don’t think she will deviate from partisanship.

Frank Watson is a retired Air Force Colonel and long-time resident of Eastern Washington. He has been a free-lance columnist for over twenty years.