When asked where Kamala Harris fit within the pantheon of great world leaders past and present, her chief campaign aide said, without a drop of irony, 'At the very top'.
When this exchange was leaked to the press, they had a field day. Even CNN, the New York Times, and MSNBC, Harris' usually reliable, unquestioning supporters, flinched when they heard it. Their candidate might be the best candidate for the times, especially now in the shadow of Donald Trump, but to place her in the company of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Lincoln was a bit of a stretch.
The White House felt it necessary to respond to the hostile, misogynist, racist comments about the woman who would lead the country, and the Press Secretary angrily replied,
The Vice President is most definitely a woman of historical significance, a woman who in fact transcends history, for this moment of history, this critical, existential moment, is unique in the chronicle of human events. Our future, the future of America and the future of the planet depend on her.
Hoots and howls, raspberries and raucous jeers came from the back of the press room where journalists from conservative media outlets had been seated. The Press Secretary called for calm, and when it was restored, thanked everyone for their patience and consideration, but simply couldn't restrain herself. Her dander was up and she wouldn't back down.
She then began a harangue of the narrow-minded, patriarchal, unconscionably hostile journalists who unfairly attacked the Vice President. Wild-eyed and savage-looking, weirdly possessed, and looking like a Cameroonian shaman, she ranted on until she was hooked off the podium from the wings.
This event was front page news, for if the Press Secretary, known for her temperance and political savoir-faire had gone so far off the rails, what did this mean for the candidacy of Kamala Harris? Such hysteria could only mean panic, and although the polls showed a tight race, Democrats were on tenterhooks.
Donald Trump would make mincemeat of their candidate in the coming debate, and keeping her from the public for so long - an attempt to corral her incoherent rants about the universe and 'actuality' - might have been the wrong approach. She would go up against the Genghis Khan of politics, a man with no sympathies, not an ounce of rectitude, a barbarian who would just as soon rip her to shreds and leave the bits for the dogs with no practice.
Even though progressive Democrats had been on a crusade to revise history, to expunge all traces of what they called 'patriarchal barbarism', deposed American icons like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, and left only Kamala Harris standing as the only American leader who truly and faithfully espoused American values, they were a little queasy about claiming her place with them.
She might not be the airhead the Right claimed, but she was still the woman for now, and the sooner the pantheon episode was forgotten, the better.
Or course Washington in an election year cannot be silenced, and the press corps was more rabid than ever to get to the bottom of the affair. And where was the Vice President? She could have simply and modestly demurred, saying that she couldn't possibly be compared to the greats of history and was only a simple instrument of temporal reform; but no, and her silence fueled even more rumor.
Worse, she began to parade around the stage like an empress, a Cleopatra, the dark-skinned Ptolemaic beauty who ruled Egypt and bedded Roman emperors., a high priestess bedecked in gold and redolent of jasmine and myrrh.
'She fancies herself a bloody fuckin' Egyptian, that cunt', said a British observer who knew enough of English history to remember far worse pretense.
'Assumed majesty' was the way a more temperate European critic described her, not an unattractive quality in a woman of substance and import, but a quite ridiculous one in a woman so limited in intellectual availability. 'Who does she think she is?' doesn't even come close to describing the absurdity of this desperately low-rung woman running for President.
Kamala was unfazed by the criticism, for she felt herself to be an entitled woman. For the first time in American history a woman, a black one at that, would sit atop the American political hierarchy. She need do nothing more than to be herself, to bring the beauty and wisdom of the African forest and the compassion and insight of women to the American public. She had chafed for four years under the doddering, old political supernumerary Biden, and now it was her time.
She had tried at times to express this entitlement, but somehow her tongue couldn't quite follow the instructions from her brain and it came out all wrong. She wanted to talk about black moral wholesomeness, but it came out a twisted metaphor of pimps, grilles, and the African veldt; and when she moved on to the destiny of woman, she got even more tangled with references to Jezebel and Delilah, temptresses and vixens.
Her advisors told her to keep her own counsel, and just smile for the cameras and she would be just fine. There was no way in hell that the country would elect the spawn of the devil, so be patient and your time will come.
She tried out Churchill's 'Never was so much owed by so many to so few' but the syntax confused her and it too came out all wrong, so she moved on to the far simpler 'We shall fight them on the beaches' speech, but there too she was fuzzy about English history and knew Churchill only as a racist colonialist who subjugated the black races of the world; so what was she doing channeling him of all people.
Monarchs were more understandable - the divine right of kings, the majesty of empresses, and le droit du seigneur were all fundamental and permanent - which is why she felt herself in pantheon far more royal and exalted than the 'Churchill, Roosevelt, Lincoln' one.
In any case, at this writing only a few weeks from the election (November 2024), she has yet to open her mouth in public - if you don't count the scripted homilies and old saws she belches out at campaign stops - and is hoping for the best.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the Empire mirror in the hallway leading to the Oval Office where she had a meeting with the President. She looked fine in profile, not a trace of wooly African showing but a tint of all colored peoples in her skin, a natural beauty, a queen. 'Stop it!', she said to herself as she opened the door to the office which soon would be hers.
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