The Blush Is Off The Bloom Of The Rose - Madame Harris Sits Dazed And Confused In The Oval Office

'Madame President', Kamala Harris's Chief of Staff, began, 'It's time for your Cabinet session'. 

Now Harris, thanks to her political advisors, had assembled a Cabinet that truly looked like America - black, Latino, Asian, gay, transgender, poor, disadvantaged, and marginalized.  She reluctantly chose a white man for a minor cabinet post. Undersecretary for Special Racial Affairs was his title, and his portfolio was a thin as a kindergartner's first week of crayon exercises.  

He was, in an ironic reversal of Sixties black-man-in-the-plate-glass-window show of integration, simply there to show America that this new President, down and fully committed to the cause of The Other, still had some respect....well, no, that wasn't quite the word...acknowledgement was better.  All Barton Fielding had to do was to look white, as white as possible in all photo ops, on any dais or stage, and on the steps of the White House. 

The rest of the Cabinet members were legit - LaShonda Jones was a tough ghetto femme who had earned the respect of her peers thanks to her violent precociousness. Preferring stiletto and rapier to Uzis, she was called The Blade and was selected from a heady crop of candidates from Anacostia, Washington's deep inner city by Alphonse Nickel, Alderman and longtime associate of Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry, for many years six feet under but still revered for his walkin' around money and no-show jobs.  

 

'LaShonda's the one', said Alderman Nickel. 'She will do y'all proud', and so without hesitation the vetting committee passed her with flying colors, and so she was included in the Cabinet as Undersecretary for Black Liaison, a job which, like that of Barton Fielding's had no particular policy or program responsibility, but unlike him, she was to be front and center on every stage. 

The same criteria were applied for the rest of the New Rainbow Coalition - the most swishy gay men, the toughest Bernal Heights butches, the flounciest and biggest cross-dressing transgenders, and the most physically palsied representative of the disabled the selection committee could find. A Cabinet meeting was regular side show, complete with carny barker, hoopla, and festoons on the walls. 

Some business had to be done at these meetings the new President was advised, and so as Chief Economic Advisor she had added Cornell Jeremiah Flint, Professor of Economics at Southern Kentucky A&M, renowned historian who, following in the tracks of Black Athena had claimed that the seminal Fifth Century Greek ideas of democracy and governance had come from black Africa, and that Egypt's Nubian influence was evident in the reign of Tutankhamen and Nefertiti, a black woman.  

Blanton Collier, a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo who had risen through the ranks of USAID until he had become the Administrator's principal associate was chosen as her National Security Advisor.  Now, Blanton Collier's Peace Corps experience was limited to chicken raising, and whose career at USAID was front man for the African Reparations Caucus, a group who lobbied for increased aid for the Dark Continent. 

President Harris was delighted with the assembly she had chosen, and she greeted the Cabinet, now swollen to twice its size, with warm and generous praise. 'I am SO glad to see you all here this morning looking so well and ready to do the nation's business.  You are the chosen few...' 

Here she riffed on in an ironic reference to the Jews, replacing Yahweh's selection with peoples of Palestine, Mesopotamia, and the Fertile Crescent; and before she finished she had woven a tapestry of marvelously diverse world history. 

The Cabinet members applauded, then settled in as they waited for the President's more policy-oriented remarks; but Kamala said only, 'I'll leave you to it', and exited with her aides. 

'But, Madam President', pressed her Chief of Staff, 'what about energy, Putin, Xi, and the Ayatollah?'

'What about them?', the President replied rather testily. 'That's what I hired you for'; and so the Advisor huddled with his staff to parse policy insights from her former speeches and papers.  These, however, were few and far between.  As Vice President she had been responsible for nothing, and as a prosecutor in California she knew only how to sail into crooks, make them twist and wither in the dock, and send them to jail.  Her Senate tenure was completely unremarkable, duty paid to her home state, bringing home the bacon and looking like America, but nothing else. 

So putting together a coherent policy on energy, foreign policy, international finance, and world economics was difficult indeed.  The only area in which there was a decent paper trail was domestic affairs.  There the President had spoken ad infinitum about black this, black that; the desperate poor, the marginalized, the forgotten, and Latinos.  

Yet at the same time, there wasn't a whisker of a real policy statement.  For all intents and purposes she was not unlike Chauncey Gardner, aka Chance The Gardener, the retarded caretaker in Jerzy Kosinski's book Being There whose aphorisms about gardening are taken by the political elite to be pithy metaphors for governance.

 

Her electorate was at first unconcerned about the lack of any policy direction coming from the White House.  President Harris' calls for reparations for the descendants of former slaves and for the aggressive inclusion of transgenders in boardrooms, classrooms, and bathrooms was quite enough to convince her supporters that they had pulled the right lever.  Besides, she was a quick learner, and would soon figure out what to do with those damn Jews. 

Unfortunately Democrats had a paper thin majority in both houses, so her vagaries were dismissed. 'We know exactly what she means', said the House and Senate Majority leaders, and although they had as little clue as anyone of the Left or Right, they put on a good show. 

And so it was that the blush was off the bloom of the rose - even Kamala's most ardent supporters were disappointed.  They had hoped for a flood of Executive Orders on her first day in office, and all she did was host a ladies' tea in the Rose Garden for Howard and Morehouse alumna, women delighted that one of their own was in the Oval Office and could do no wrong. 

'That's your job' became the meme of the Administration.  Kamala had recruited the best and the brightest, and she was to be their beacon, their North Star, their unwavering point on a moral compass.  The rest was mere detail, numbers on a spread sheet. 

The Right predictably howled and vented, and Trump was not one to take narrow defeat sitting down; but not long after Inauguration Day, even Harris' most ardent supporters began to wonder what they had done. Here was a vaporous, empty-headed succubus sitting at the helm of power and there was nothing for them to do but smile.  

Things went from bad to worse, and it wasn't long before Republicans played the impeachment card, and the Congress went in short order from inchoate body of grabbers to a bloody mess; but Madam remained above the fray, indomitable as only a vaporous, vacant person can be, and lasted out her term. 

'Thank God that's over', sighed the American electorate on both sides of the fence.