Where Kamala Harris has gone, problems have followed — but never responsibility. While credit and promotions have always been hers, nothing has ever been her fault. This has made for extraordinary political entrepreneurship, but it has not made for leadership.
Take Proposition 47. It has been a disaster for California. By downgrading certain crimes (certain drug crimes and thefts under $950) so that they are no longer felonies, it set off a shoplifting and drug surge. By also eliminating DNA testing for criminals of these now less-than-felonies, it has also blocked police from determining whether these criminals are linked to DNA evidence in more serious crimes.
Proposition 47 was passed in 2014. Although Kamala Harris was California’s attorney general, and her office wrote the initiative’s title and ballot language, she took no position on it, even though it was squarely within her purview as the state's top law enforcement official.
This may help explain why, even as California descended into criminal chaos, Harris remained silent about it despite her prosecutorial background.
Harris’s refusal to leave fingerprints has been her political modus operandi. During the 2020 presidential primary, with seemingly every political advantage a Democratic presidential contender could possess, Harris washed out in December 2019, before any primary or caucus had been held. Her reason? “My campaign for president simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.”
In other words, it wasn’t Kamala’s fault. What Harris left unsaid was that there had been “a flood of recent reports describing her campaign as chaotic.”
Her floundering as vice president was similarly blamed on her staff, not herself. A 2021 CNN story summed up their interviews: “They all tell roughly the same story: Harris’s staff has repeatedly failed her and left her exposed, and family members have often had an informal say within her office.”
It added that “Even some who have been asked for advice lament Harris’s overly cautious tendencies and staff problems, which have been a feature of every office she’s held, from San Francisco district attorney to U.S. Senate.”
Again, it wasn’t Harris’s fault but her staff’s. Speaking of which, her vice presidential staff had a crazy 92 percent turnover rate — I'm sure that has nothing to do with Harris herself.
One of the Biden-Harris administration’s biggest failures has been immigration. Despite being the point person on the issue, Harris has started her 2024 presidential run by running away from responsibility for the border fiasco. Of course, she left to others even the responsibility of denying her role as Biden's border chief.
The Biden-Harris administration is replete with foreign policy failures. The recent anniversary of its horrendous, ignominious retreat from Afghanistan prompted Harris to say: "As I have said, President Biden made the courageous and right decision to end America’s longest war." Of course, she was careful to say it was Biden’s decision, even though at the time she had inflated her own role in it.
Another of the Biden-Harris administration’s biggest failures has been rampant inflation. From fiscal 2021 through 2024, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that federal spending exceeded 2019’s pre-pandemic level by $8.2 trillion and caused deficits of $7.7 trillion.
Simultaneous with this spending surge, inflation spiked, the Urban Consumer Price Index jumped from an annualized 2.6 percent rate in March 2021 to 9.1 percent by June 2021. Inflation has been above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent benchmark for 41 consecutive months during the Biden-Harris administration’s tenure.
Even though inflation can be directly linked to this administration’s enormous spending, Harris won't acknowledge any responsibility, which is par for the course for no-fault Kamala.
While in the Senate, though, Harris supported precisely the kind of deficit spending that causes inflation. She was the first presidential candidate to co-sponsor the wildly expensive Green New Deal and a version of a guaranteed income plan. If anything, Harris promises to be an even bigger spender than Biden has been.
Whenever cracks have appeared in Harris’s denial of responsibility, she has simply responded by reversing her position. Her flip-flop on fracking and her new embrace of a border wall are two examples. The only consistency in Harris's inconsistency is her refusal to accept responsibility for anything.
Harris’s avoidance of responsibility has aided in her unprecedented rise in American politics. In 2020, she didn’t win a primary or a single delegate, yet she became vice president. In 2024, she didn’t win a primary or a single delegate; yet she became the Democratic presidential nominee. This is political fortune unlike anyone else's in history. But it is not leadership.
President Harry Truman had a sign on his Oval Office desk that read: The Buck Stops Here. If Kamala Harris gets to the White House, her sign will read: The Buck Starts Here.
America is in a period fraught with danger — largely brought on by the administration Harris has co-helmed for four years. Yet Harris accepts no responsibility for any of her administration’s myriad failures — even as she claims that her administration experience qualifies her to be president. Nor does she give access to anyone who might seriously ask her about those failures.
More ominously, she does not give any hint as to what she would do with the ultimate responsibility she is asking America to give her.
J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987 to 2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004 to 2023.
