The former Reagan speechwriter who has had a Wall Street Journal weekly column for decades. She is a thoughtful person (and no fan of Trump). I have not read either book (and won’t be). Excerpts below the link.
Kamala Harris’s memoir gives you little idea of what she believes. John Fetterman’s is better.
I spent the week reading two memoirs. Kamala Harris’s “107 Days” is about her 2024 presidential campaign. Its title is her defense: She only had 107 days to win, and it wasn’t enough, so she lost. John Fetterman’s “Unfettered,” is about his political life so far. They are strange books in different ways.
In Ms. Harris’s memoir any guiding political philosophy is absent, which is odd in someone who wished to occupy the nation’s highest political office. You should at least go through the motions. Mr. Fetterman does come alive on the subject, but mostly when he’s talking about Republican stands he agrees with.
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Ms. Harris’s book is insistently shallow, almost as if that were a virtue, a sign of authenticity. The epigrams she presents at the beginning are weird. There is a quote from an Italian software engineer named Alberto Brandolini: “The amount of energy necessary to refute bull— is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”
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When Joe Biden called to tell her he was dropping out, she pressed for his immediate endorsement. Her argument: She was “the most qualified and ready. The highest name recognition. A powerful donor base.” Also she wouldn’t betray him. She lists no other, more national concerns.
The closest she comes to a political philosophy, a driving force that explains her career, is “I want to keep people safe and help them thrive.” But few enter politics to see constituents endangered and withering. She sees herself as generous in her concern for others—“I’ve always been a protector”—and, again, loyal. But these are personal qualities, not beliefs.
Without realizing it she comes close to a reason for her loss when speaking of illegal immigration. She refuses to call it that, insisting instead on “irregular migration.”
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The head of a party, its presidential candidate, should, in a book, be able to explain her own philosophical beginning points. That she couldn’t or wouldn’t speaks of some of why she lost. But this is also a flaw now with many Democratic office holders of the nonsocialist left.
In John Fetterman’s “Unfettered” you have to infer his political philosophy but he doesn’t make it hard for you. America is a “contradiction,” a place of haves and have-nots; he wants the “struggling” to know they have “an authentic advocate.” He began his political career as a mayor in Western Pennsylvania steel country, with closed-down steel mills and boarded-up Main Streets. He says that since childhood he felt like a loser and became a loner and is drawn to those on the losing end. Government can play a role in helping destroyed small towns come back. He goes deep on his personal experience of depression following a life-threatening stroke and just after his election to the Senate. His portrait of his breakdown is harrowing and believable.
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He doesn’t mind talking about where he stands and why, isn’t afraid of big issues, and is most animated when speaking of his nonprogressive views. He stands with Israel, marshals his arguments, smacks those who imply that it “has to do with impaired mental health.”
“I don’t take positions for my own self-interest,” he writes. “I take positions based on what I believe is right.” His stand on Israel has cost him support “from a significant part of my base, and I’m well aware it may cost me my seat. I’m completely at peace with that.”
He broke with Democrats on illegal immigration. “Some in our party assert that an open border is a compassionate policy but I don’t agree. An open border . . . is chaos, both for those immigrants and for those citizens impacted by the overwhelming number of people coming in who need assistance.”
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The Democratic Party, he says, knowingly lied that the border was secure. He believes this was the deciding factor in the 2024 election.
It’s a relief to hear a major political figure speak of at least some of his beliefs and why he holds them. Moderate Democrats should do this more.
Zohran Mamdani knows exactly what he stands for. They’d better, too.
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