As you slog through whatever is left of your investments, and as we wait with bated breath for Vice President and selected Democrat nominee Kamala Harris to announce her VP pick, we might want to consider: Does Kamala dress presidential enough?
If you aren’t in a pondering mood, the New York Times has done it for you.
Instead she is wearing her usual tone-on-tone silk shells and pussy-bow blouses. Her usual signature pearls and 70-millimeter Manolo Blahnik heels. For the last four years, that was the perfect camouflage of the country’s No. 2 executive: somber, deferential, kind of dull.
But does it look presidential?
In an election in which so much about one candidate is potentially pioneering — she could be the first female president, the first female president of color, the first president of South Asian descent — that is a key question.
“How you present yourself as a woman in leadership is an issue every woman in leadership has to consider,” said Ashley Allison, the chief executive of Watering Hole Media and a former Biden-Harris campaign adviser. Ms. Harris, she said, “is trying to break what is potentially the biggest, thickest, largest glass ceiling there is.” How she equips herself for that matters.
Does how she equips herself matter as much as what she stands for, New York Times? Perhaps some road map on how a Harris-Whomever administration is going to get us out of this recession? Or maybe how a future President Harris plans to deal with a nuclear Iran? Because those pallets of cash worked so well to deter them. Aside from Harris giving us an Atlanta rally with a twerking Megan Thee Stallion, a campaign announcement with the Drag Queens and Trans friends on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” and announcing the endorsements of washed-up celebrities, Bush-era RINOs, and NeverTrumpers on her “Kamala Wins” X account, Harris has offered little in the way of policy points nor has she given any indication on how she would actually govern.
But first and foremost for the New York Times is that Harris looks really good doing whatever she will do… or not do.
It’s not really about some objective measure of chic. It’s not about being endorsed by Vogue, though Ms. Harris was. It’s about what voters read into what Ms. Harris wears; how they relate to it. Clothes become, in many ways, a stand-in for all the inchoate feelings the electorate has about a candidate, good and bad, and especially about a female candidate.
Here is Vogue’s gag-worthy endorsement of Harris’ “presidential” fashion choices.
Whether she is wearing custom Chloé for a state dinner, or a denim jacket bedazzled with the Pride flag, Kamala Harris has used clothing to broadcast authority, political statements, and competence throughout her term. We have no doubt her run for President of the United States will be just as thoughtful.
That was about as substantive as cotton candy, and equally cloying. You see, a single mother could not care less about whether Harris’ custom-made and designer clothing broadcasts authority; she is more concerned about clothing her children for the coming school year. For a candidate who claims to want to be a president for all Americans, Harris’ company and fashion choices scream “elitist” at high decibels.
And Harris never forgets to accessorize; but while the rest of us settle for costume, for VP Harris, only Tiffany will do.
So, while Kamala Harris is looking chic and exuding strength with her custom pantsuit and silk-pressed hair, never fear, because Harris looks the part, and Bidenomics is working.
Harris, the most dressed for success abject failure on the planet. Are you ready for four years of this?
