DRIVEN TO SUCCEED
It has been nearly 50 years since Brooklyn-born Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman in Congress, ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, and nearly 40 years since Geraldine Ferraro, a popular congresswoman from Queens, was chosen by Jimmy Carter’s former Vice-President, Walter Mondale, to run alongside him on the Democratic presidential ticket.
Twelve years ago, John McCain plucked the Governor of Alaska and former beauty contest winner, Sarah Palin, to run with him on the Republican ticket, and it seems only yesterday that probably the most experienced politician ever to run for the office of President, Hillary Clinton, was unable to shatter the literal glass ceiling at her campaign headquarters in Manhattan’s Javits Center on election night 2016, when she was defeated by the Republican outlier, New York real estate developer and reality television star Donald Trump.
All these accomplished women valiantly tried to attain the highest elected political positions in the US but they all failed until Kamala Devi Harris, the former San Francisco district attorney, California Attorney-General and senator, was sworn in last month as the first African-American, Southeast-Asian and female Vice-President of the United States.
The two Harris girls got a stroller’s eye view of getting into “good trouble”.
What is it about Harris that allowed her to succeed where so many of her accomplished forebears failed? Now that she is the first in the order of succession to take the place of President Joe Biden – who, at 78, is the oldest man ever to attain that office – how will she influence his leadership and affect national policy as he attempts to heal a nation ravaged by Covid and traumatised by an account of Harris’ path to the pinnacle of US politics.
