Who actually votes for people based on reading a book written by the candidate? I do. Barack Obama’s books were what convinced me that he had a decent balance of soul and pragmatism to capture the imagination of the American people so I eagerly signed up for his campaign. You should know the rest of the story. Now we live in a dystopian world post-Obama that confirms we literally cannot have nice things—the supply chain is teetering on the brink of collapse. A slew of candidates put their hats in the ring for the 2020 election. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a Warren girl because she is more of a nerd and striver than I will ever be, but with the same anger (and awkwardness). No one else likes her because apparently the ability to drink beer with your national executive is a crucial part of the job during pandemics. I also liked Kristen Gillibrand because Hilary groomed her, but she was made on the streets. OK, not literally, but if the world hardens the mother who worked for big firms until she curses openly in public, then that is a Venn diagram that I cannot ignore and embrace.
Then there is Kamala D. Harris. As Obama would say, let me be clear. I liked her because out of all the candidates, she seemed not to get shaken when physically confronted in public, and I was sure that if Presidon’t started to get too close to her on the debate stage, she would shank him with her eyes, and God help him if she had coffee. She stood out because of her ability to verbally cut people to their face and find the soundbite. She is better than me. The bonus is that she also happens to be a biracial (different blend) black woman, which I knew would not be a bonus in the real world, and I was right. She is also married to a white guy and was a prosecutor, which I do not have a problem with, but other people seemed to distrust her. I have no idea if they are right or not. It is true that not all skin folk are kinfolk, but how do I decide these things? Books! I immediately requested her books from the library and proceeded not to read them until long after she stopped running for President, and somehow managed to wait so long that she is suddenly germane to the national political discourse again as a potential running mate for the Democratic Party’s Presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe “It is a big fucking deal” Biden. Sigh. I only blame Obama for a few things and elevating Biden to becoming a viable presidential candidate after he tried and failed a zillion times in my lifetime is one of them, but will I vote for him? I would vote for anything or anyone else. The bar is low.
I started with Harris’ first book, Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer, which I would not recommend, before moving on to her second book, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, which is so obviously the kind of book that a presidential hopeful writes in the hope that it will gain them more support. Was this genre of book always a thing? Let’s stop it. Law school does its best to kill the poetry of its students, and not everyone can be Obama and leave with a sense of palatable prose intact. Law school killed poetry for me, and I know that it destroyed others ability to read for fun. Harris clearly tries harder to capture her humanity on the page than she did in her first book, but all the woman wants to do is talk about work, and there is nothing wrong with it except this book is supposed to be an autobiography. She rushes as quickly as possible through the personal if it does not involve her mother. She dutifully sprinkles sparks of normality through her book to show that she is one of us—she likes to cook; she has Sunday family dinners; she goes on dates—but eagerly returns to detailing her latest work exploit. It could be me, but I found it extremely difficult to keep track of the people in her life since she tosses out their name, a snippet of a story then stays with her latest career milestone. Warren’s policy wonky autobiography may have been dull and plodding, but when she told a personal story, it took root and felt refreshing like an oasis in the desert because she was clearly used to reflecting on that moment in her life.
Harris is all drive. Her voice comes alive in The Truths We Hold: An American Journey when she recounts sticking it to an opponent or deciding to intervene on behalf of the underdog, but I already knew this aspect of her personality, and I did not need to read hundreds of pages to discover it. I did discover that she is compelled to act though maybe is not so paralyzed with the idea of consequences two to three steps down the line as I am. For example, during the Muslim ban, she rallied private attorneys to represent the detained, but never considers whether a lawyer would be capable of practicing in that area or offers if she also provided training. My job does not permit me a lot of latitude with representing other people, but I was frozen at the idea of volunteering then doing a bad job if I jumped in with no preparation. If Harris is remarkable, it is for being a woman of color retaining the confidence normally reserved for another demographic with less merit to back it up.
For people who are concerned that as a former prosecutor, she will be too much of an enforcer, I do not think that you have to worry about it. The Truths We Hold: An American Journey shows that she is more of a spirit of the law than a letter of the law kind of attorney. I must confess that I clutched my pearls when in her professional, elected capacity, she brazenly boasted that she did not care about the law when she contacted another lawyer’s client instead of the lawyer (it is a lawyer’s professional development rule issue) or she married a same sex couple when it was not the law. I agreed with her actions substantively, but wondered how she was less risk averse and not concerned about consequences with her license than a towering historical figure such as Fritz Bauer, who survived the Holocaust, but was more surreptitious when he secretly turned legal vigilante. Damn! I suppose that she was confident that history would be on her side, and no one would use it to get her.
I cannot recommend The Truths We Hold: An American Journey except for those most ardent Harris fans. It was a complete slog to read and failed to grab my attention. It did not help that I lived through most of the events from 2016 through now that she details in her books so it felt like a repeat.