[50 years ago this week, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned. That striking political moment was not only part of the deepening Watergate scandal, but one of the few times when an American Vice President has made major news. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied Agnew and other noteworthy Veeps, leading up to this weekend post on our current VP!]
On a
couple ways that the current Vice President represents real and meaningful
progress.
First, one
of those openings where I ask you to read another piece of mine in lieu of a
full paragraph here: in this case, an August
2020 Saturday Evening Post
Considering History column inspired by Joe Biden’s selection of Kamala
Harris as his running mate. Check it out and then come on back if you would!
Welcome
back! In the Conclusion of my book Redefining
American Identity (2011) I made the case that Barack Obama might well
be “the first American President” due to his multi-racial and cross-cultural
heritage, a heritage that (my
argument in that book went) is foundational to all of American history and
identity. While that is of course a symbolic and somewhat overstated (on
purpose) point, I’d stand by it, and would say much the same about the layers
to Kamala Harris’s heritage and identity that I discussed in that 2020 column. Obviously
she is not defined by what happened to and with her paternal ancestors, even
less so than Obama is defined by his parents, so these are not really points
about the figures themselves, so much as about the American (and global)
histories that are part of the figures’ heritages, and how important it is to
finally have leaders who overtly connect to those histories in ways we have not
previously seen. Having such a leader in the
Vice Presidency isn’t entirely new (seriously, check out that story about a
prior VP we should all better remember), but it’s a significant and inspiring
step nonetheless.
It’s not
the only such step that Harris represents, of course, and even a cross-cultural
America superfan like yours truly has to admit that there’s another layer to
her representative status which is even more significant. Back in 2015, I made
the case in another column, this one for Talking
Points Memo, that Walter Mondale’s choice of Geraldine Ferraro for his 1984 running mate
was one of the most impressive and inspiring political moments in our history. Unfortunately
(for so,
so many reasons), Mondale and Ferraro did not win that election, and so we
had to wait nearly four decades more for our first woman Vice President. (And
are, even more frustratingly, still waiting for our first woman President, but
that’s another story for another post.) To anyone who might call that kind of
step purely symbolic, I would respond (among other counter-arguments) that the
Vice Presidency has long been a symbolic position, whatever else it might have included
or meant, and it’s about damned time we have an occupant who symbolizes half of
the country.
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Vice Presidents you’d highlight?
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