Vice-presidents rarely impact voting behaviour, but Kamala Harris could be an exception

Ronald Reagan’s raucous performance in the first presidential debate in 1984 raised more than a few eyebrows in the press and among Republican pollsters.

“Reagan’s debate performance invites open speculation about his ability to serve,” said a Wall Street Journal headline. The Milwaukee Journal, in an editorial 39 years before Axios, later wrote, “White House aides, by limiting media access to Reagan, reduced opportunities for presidential gaffes.”

The old becomes new again. On Friday, Axios wondered what it called the White House’s limited daily schedule in relation to Joe Biden’s age, adding that “the White House rarely puts Biden in an improvisational setting.”

Biden, already the oldest US president on record, announced his bid for re-election this week. He would be 86 if he were to serve two full terms, and the launch of his campaign has sparked a wave of analysis of whether age will be a factor for voters, including on the page.

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who is about to become president, brought up the issue of Biden’s age with disdain this week.

“That idea [Biden] will make it to 86 years is not what I thought,” Haley said in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday.

He has previously raised the prospect of an unlikely mental competency test for presidential candidates, clearly thinking of Biden and Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump, who turns 77 next month. Reagan, for the record, was 73 at the time of the debate and then ran against Democrat Walter Mondale in the 1984 vote.

Mental acuity is a problem on Capitol Hill

Historically, only eight of the 45 presidents have died in office, and not since 1963 when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the fourth president to die by gun violence.

The last of the four to die due to health reasons was Franklin Roosevelt in 1945. Roosevelt suffered from paralysis and many other health problems.

WATCH | In an age where Republicans highlight Biden’s gaffes, he points to his achievements:

While Biden has outlived the life expectancy of the average American male, White House doctors gave him a clean bill of health earlier this year. Biden’s most serious brush with death actually came in his mid-40s, when he twice underwent brain surgery for an aneurysm.

The issue of age and mental acuity has been a hot topic in Washington lately as Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, 89, has been out for months. The absence “came because his health and memory had declined significantly in recent years,” according to an Associated Press report, and meant that some of Biden’s judicial choices had stalled on the committee he served on.

On the Republican side, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, 81, suffered a concussion and rib injuries in a fall that required him to be away from DC for six weeks.

Will Harris help decide the ‘margin’?

Biden’s age and day job could see Vice President Kamala Harris campaign extensively in 2024, while Republicans can be expected to raise alarm about Harris’ potential presidential prospects being decided by Father Time, not voters. Feinstein’s example illustrates that it is not necessarily death that could theoretically put Harris in the Oval Office.

“If you vote for Joe Biden, you’re really voting for President Harris,” Haley said on Fox News.

Biden largely avoided a traditional campaign in 2020 because the pandemic was declared in March of that year. They rely on a series of peaks and virtual addresses.

In a polarized American political scene that has emerged from two narrow presidential elections, one of which has created an uproar in the Capitol, the vice presidential factor cannot be discounted this time around.

“Vice presidential candidates, if they’re going to make a difference, they’re going to make it at the border,” Joel Goldstein, a historian of the vice president, told the AP. “But if you look at our recent history, most of our presidential elections have been decided on the margins.”

‘He’s not a good messenger’

The last vice presidential candidate believed to have had a significant impact on voting behavior was Sarah Palin, who was elected in 2008 by Republican nominee John McCain.

According to one analysis, there is theoretical “support for the proposition that candidate pairs are an important short-term force influencing voter behavior.” However, said Jonathan Knuckey in an analysis published in 2012 in Political Research Quarterly, there is evidence to suggest that “Palin has also contributed to the loss of support among swing voters.”

It is conceivable that the same effect could occur in 2024 as Harris has polled worse than Biden. In an AP-National Opinion Research Center poll conducted in January, 43 percent of US adults had a favorable opinion of Biden, and 36 percent said the same about Harris. Among Democrats, Biden was at 78 percent and Harris was at 67 percent, although 10 percent said they didn’t know enough about Harris to have an opinion.

Harris has only served as a U.S. senator once after a long career in California politics, and former White House chief of staff Ron Klain said this week on a podcast that he believes he is still not a known quantity to many Americans.

Erin Perrine, a spokeswoman for the super political action committee (known as a super PAC) that supports Florida governor Ron DeSantis, scoffed that Harris would help Biden’s re-election chances.

“He’s not a good messenger,” Perrine told the AP. “He tends not to just follow the message, but to give a word salad answer, and then when he’s uncomfortable, he laughs.”

While the Republican attack on Harris has focused on optics and not many of his trips to see foreign leaders, Democrats pointed to his efforts after the seismic Supreme Court decision last year gave some states the impetus to roll back or outlaw abortion access. In addition, access to some abortion drugs is now before the courts.

Harris has hosted a White House summit on reproductive rights, and just this week spoke at Howard University in Washington, DC, on the topic of women’s health, which Democrats believe will help mobilize their base in 2024.

WATCH | Biden believes he is ready and can run another campaign:

At the risk of stating the obvious, add to the mix the fact that Harris is also the first Black and Asian vice president, with Indian heritage.

Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster, said Harris was “probably better able to connect, in an authentic way, with the critical emerging group of American voters on whom we depend so much to win a majority.”

Of course, right now Harris is being assessed in a vacuum. Although Trump emerged as the Republican presidential nominee, former VP Mike Pence actually testified against him in court, so there will be a new candidate with his own accomplishments and vulnerabilities to compare and debate with Harris.