thependulumswings

Pre Zoom and pre casual Friday there were offices, typewriters, secretaries, liquid paper, ties, and suits.  The suits may have been two-piece or three-piece, wide lapel or not, with a matching pocket square or not, but everyone wore them in the workplace.

Surely you’ve heard that you never get a second chance to make a first impression.  But, ultimately it was what’s inside of that suit that counted.

One of our senior staff members had a dyed in the wool suit wearer of a father, complete with a fedora most days.  When he thought less of a person’s abilities than necessary to competently carry out the duties of their job, he called them an “empty suit.”

An empty suit might have looked the part or tried to talk the talk, but they couldn’t walk the walk as we twist Jimmy Johnson’s battle cry.

Today, we have a Vice President of the United States who regardless of her choice of clothing might have reached “empty suit” status.  Her name is Kamala Harris, and her accomplishments after one year are, well, we aren’t so sure.

But, she seems so sure of her abilities.  “Anything that I handle is because it’s a tough issue, and it couldn’t be handled at some other level.  And it has actually been part of my lifelong career to deal with tough issues and this is no different.”

Sounds like she’s talking down to the minions at levels below the VP to us.  We also note that there is no “I” in “team” as you may have heard.

And, actually, there may be no team in DC named team Kamala soon as well.  Her key staff departures are growing by the week.  Rumors of lack of strategy, lack of preparedness, and outright finger-pointing by the VP abound.

So what does a VP really do?  And what should/or does this VP really do?  POTUS named VPOTUS as the lead on the border crisis for one.  She’s resisted going there and says that she’s working on the “root causes” of unprecedented illegal crossings.

Don’t we all know what the root cause is?  It’s an open border policy driven by this administration of course.  Close the border, fix the problem.  Boom!  “What’s next?” she could ask.

She did fly to France and back.  The reasons for which are still unknown.  She does laugh a lot.  The reasons for which are called nerves.

Could she tackle this tricky virus thing?

She’s not the first VP and won’t be the last to be a punching bag.  The list and the list of failures/shortcomings are long.  VP nominee Spiro T Agnew, for example, never made it to the office for all of the right reasons.  Dan Quayle ran headlong into a tough word in a spelling bee.

But, Kamala might have made it to the office for all of the wrong reasons.  Joe Biden moved left and further left in each passing week on the road to the nomination. During Democratic debate #2 he announced that if nominated he would have a woman as his running mate.  During debate #3 he announced that she would be black as well.

There’s nothing wrong with being black or being a woman.  But, those aren’t qualifications.  They’re vote-getters.

There is plenty wrong with being over-jobbed.

What to do?  What to do?  Ah, yes.  Play the race card.

The Daily Mail reports that Ms. Harris has told her confidants that she would get better press coverage if she was a white man.  Joe Biden isn’t feeling too good about his press coverage right about now.   Donald Trump took a daily beating in years prior.  And, George Bush doesn’t send Dan Rather any Christmas cards.

So, is it down to whether Joe chose wrong, or a serious operation is forthcoming?

As a reminder, Harris was polling at less than 1% before dropping out prior to the first primary in Iowa when gunning for the highest job in the land back in 2019.  Basically, her own party doesn’t like her.

Now, with her all-time low VP poll numbers in 2021, she’s turning to none other than Hillary Clinton for advice to reverse the dire poll numbers.

Maybe the “vast right-wing conspiracy” theory will get dusted off?  There’s a great Bleachbit joke possible there too.

This will get interesting.  You now have an “empty suit” asking an “empty pantsuit” for advice.

What could go wrong?