The virtue of ruthlessness

Harris aims to show she is up to the job.

Democrats devoted much of their convention messaging this week to the idea of joy. They certainly are overjoyed to be back in the presidential contest, and happy to contrast their party with Republicans’ grim descriptions of national doom. But their candidate also projected a strain of ruthlessness, even ferocity.

Before you leap to your keyboard to respond: I do not use the word “ruthless” as criticism or praise. It’s simply one aspect of a presidential campaign. Vice President Harris faced the task of showing that she was up to the challenge of the hardest job in the world.

Any presidential nominee at all would face this challenge. No candidates ever seem big enough for the job until they occupy it. This has been true across the presidencies of my lifetime, and true in history: candidate George W. Bush came across as a decent governor of a single state, and candidate Bill Clinton was a talented guy trying to sound like a president. Candidate Abraham Lincoln was just a clean-shaven country lawyer. But all of them had to suggest to a doubtful public that they could fill the job.

Harris faced an additional, and unfair, demand because every single presidential role model the voting public has ever seen has been a man (white men, with one exception). She is up against a former president who offers a certain idea of toughness and masculinity through his stagecraft. Trump minimizes his obesity by wearing suits with big shoulder pads, and thrusting up his chin. He uses short words and sentences that suggest he knows what he’s talking about, while telling apocalyptic stories in which he is the savior. Several times he has recounted the assassination attempt against him.

Gender issues aside, the presidency is hard. Sometimes it calls for the ruthless exercise of power. It often demands even harder skills: patience, timing, prioritizing, restraint. So how did Harris present herself?