“In her short time as vice president, Harris had either volunteered or had been assigned to lead on immigration, “disinformation”, abortion rights, broadband access, black maternal mortality, racial inequality, women in the workforce, infrastructure, voting rights, artificial intelligence, and the Space Council… The American public, however, failed to see that she got anything done.” – Amateur Hour
The Peter Principle says that people will rise to a level of respective incompetence once they are promoted to a position outside their qualifications. At that point, they will rise no more. Experience in one job does not always translate to another, even for those who may have been capable in their earlier roles. Too often leading to lower company revenues and profits, mismatched promotions remove good employees from a position in which they are competent and elevate them to one where they are not. Whether the Peter Principle will end Kamala Harris’s rise to President of the United States is yet to be decided. However, if the theory holds, Ms. Harris’s days in the White House are certainly numbered.
Following four years of assertions that President Joe Biden was as sharp as a tack, a devastating debate performance in June 2024 had Democrat Party elders showing Biden the door. In his place, the Party of Democracy, instead, unilaterally installed Kamala Harris without a single vote. Selected, you might say, not elected. As Biden’s diversity hire, based on his own words, Harris was initially chosen for her race and gender, not necessarily because she was best. With the lowest approval ratings for a vice president and with historically high negatives, Harris, the first Democrat to drop from the 2020 primary due to lack of support, became the party’s candidate for President.
In Charles Spiering’s 2024 book, “Amateur Hour”, Spiering looks into the life and experiences of would-be President, Kamala Harris, as it appeared Biden was not competent to win a second term. Rather than the middle-class childhood she so often claims, Harris was raised, instead, by a Stanford-tenured father, and a biomedical scientist mother, in Berkeley California, and later, Montreal, Canada. With the help of political mogul Willie Brown, Harris quickly scaled the heights of California’s legal system. First, as a deputy district attorney, then as a city attorney, and eventually as district attorney of San Francisco, Harris ultimately rose to California’s top spot as Attorney General. Throughout her service, Harris advocated higher bail for gun crimes, was avidly anti-death penalty, supported hate crime legislation, backed sanctuary city status, championed race-based admissions, and even prosecuted anti-abortion activists.
Following Barbara Boxer’s retirement, Harris easily won her United States Senate seat in 2017. Visibility during her first term and her eventual run for President in 2020, made her a national name and set her up for promotion to Biden’s Vice President in 2020. During her political career, Harris sided with stricter gun control, supported the passage of Obama’s Dream Act, advocated for the far-left Medicare for All, and regularly voted for higher taxes. GovTrack, a website that collects data on members of Congress, ranked Harris as the most liberal Senator in 2019, beating out far-left fringe Senators, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
As Vice President, Harris was the first Black, first Indian American, and first female to serve. But these irrelevant attributes would not be enough to ensure her political success. In three years, 92 percent of Harris’s staff would leave for reasons of stinging criticism, and a chaotic and toxic work environment. As for her duties, Harris not only failed to visit the southern border as border czar but never met with anyone in the Border Patrol, while a record number of illegals flooded the country, bringing havoc to overwrought cities. It didn’t help that many illegals breached the border wearing Biden-Harris t-shirts. In yet another area of incompetence, Harris confirmed that she was the last person in the room with Biden before the Afghanistan decision, outing herself for her key role in the disastrous withdrawal.
But her tie-breaking role in two ineffective economic bills came at a time when more Americans were worried about being unable to pay their bills than during the Great Recession at the end of 2007. The first was the unpopular 1.9 trillion dollar 2021 American Rescue Plan that doled out excessive COVID money, and the equally disliked 1.2 trillion dollar 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which was basically a slimmed-down version of the Green New Deal, both of which led to higher inflation and poor economic performance. Now, as a Presidential candidate, Harris has already threatened to break the bank with a $25,000 downpayment for new homebuyers, more student loan and medical expenses forgiveness, and an unearned income tax for taxpayers.
When asked to recall achievements that Harris accomplished as Vice President, man-on-the-street interviews turned up little. With most claiming ignorance over her job performance, many still plan to vote for her, perhaps exhibiting some of that “soft bigotry of low expectations”. Since she fits the identity politics criteria, for some, that is more than enough.
The Peter Principle says that in a hierarchy, people will be promoted until they reach a level in which they are incompetent and will not qualify to be promoted again. At that point, they remain stuck in Peter’s plateau, their final placement. One can only hope that as Harris’s dismal record as Vice President is considered, the Peter Principle will hold, and she will not receive her desired promotion.
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