中美创新时报

哈里斯正在借助拜登的履历竞选,但她可能会成为不同类型的总统

【中美创新时报2024 年 7 月 28 日编译讯】(记者温友平编译)哈里斯已经与拜登齐心协力任职三年半了,现在,在拜登的支持下,哈里斯竞选总统主要依靠的是他们政府的政绩。但在辩论舞台上的这一刻,让我们看到了她与拜登在总统职位上可能以不同方式对待的微妙之处,她可能不太受参议院传统和规范的束缚,而是更积极地行使行政权力,这反映了他们之间的代际转变和履历差异。对此,《波士顿环球报》记者塔尔·柯潘(Tal Kopan)作了下述报道。  

2019 年,当乔·拜登在总统初选辩论中就当时的竞争对手卡玛拉·哈里斯 (Kamala Harris) 提出的使用行政命令进行枪支管制的合法性展开辩论时,哈里斯反驳道:“嘿,乔,不要说‘不,我们不能’,让我们说‘是的,我们可以’。”

当然,哈里斯会继续加入最终的提名人拜登,担任副总统。她与他齐头并进地工作了 3 年半,现在在他的支持下,她竞选总统主要是因为他们政府的成就。共和党人还试图将她与政府的弱点联系起来,例如边境安全和持续的高生活成本。

但在辩论舞台上,她可能以与拜登不同的微妙方式对待总统职位,可能不太受参议院的传统和规范的束缚,更积极地行使行政权力,这反映了他们之间的代际转变和履历差异。

“我认为,乔·拜登仍然怀念那些日子……参议院的集体主义将占上风,会做出无数妥协,”民主党众议员贾里德·霍夫曼说,他长期与哈里斯合作,担任加州代表。“那些日子早已一去不复返了。所以我认为卡玛拉·哈里斯是在这个新时代成长起来的,不幸的是,这个时代更加两极分化和部落化,需要采取一些不同的方法。”

现在,在绕过民主党提名挑战后,她不必详细阐述在 11 月前冲刺期间与特朗普形成对比的计划。她的竞选团队和白宫工作人员拒绝了采访请求,并提到了她在竞选活动中的言论。

但她的记录清楚地表明,她的直觉比拜登更倾向于进步,这在她上次竞选总统时就得到了证明,当时两人作为竞争对手在如何处理医疗保健和防止枪支暴力等标志性问题上发生争执。

除了政策细节之外,她对总统权力的看法也更为强硬。

为了缩小男女工资差距,她在 2019 年提议建立“同工同酬认证”,公司可以申请,并要求联邦合同必须有该认证。在移民政策方面,她制定了一系列计划,将大大扩大对儿时来到美国的无证移民以及美国公民的无证家庭的保护和入籍途径,所有这些都没有经过国会批准。在枪支暴力预防方面,哈里斯宣布她将给国会 100 天时间来通过立法,然后将采取一系列行政行动。尽管他们在 2019 年就这个想法发生了冲突,但拜登在其任期后期颁布了一些类似的措施。

哈里斯还接受了取消参议院通过气候变化立法的 60 票门槛的想法,并表示愿意改革最高法院,而拜登对这两项都不太支持。

自最高法院作出多布斯裁决以来,她也是政府在堕胎权方面的首要使者,这既是因为她长期致力于这一问题,也是因为拜登对此犹豫不决。

哈里斯的前雇员和同事认为她更关注政策结果,而不是实现这一目标所需的过程。他们说,她要求她的员工将提案分解成普通美国人的具体条款,并认为选民也更关心切实的变化而不是政治进程。

她的前助理雷切尔·帕勒莫 (Rachel Palermo) 说,甚至连她自己作为一名打破障碍的有色人种女性和移民女儿的人生经历也改变了她对华盛顿传统的看法。

“副总统认为,仅仅因为某件事总是以某种方式完成并不意味着它必须按照这种方式继续完成,”帕勒莫说。“她在很多角色中都是第一人,这一事实体现了这种想法。”

马萨诸塞州参议员伊丽莎白·沃伦说,她第一次见到哈里斯是在近 15 年前,当时两人都还未加入参议院,哈里斯当时是加州总检察长,而沃伦正在帮助创建消费者金融保护局。沃伦回忆说,他们“每天都”会打电话讨论州检察长如何利用他们的权力对付大银行。此后的几年里,无论是在参议院还是在哈里斯加入政府后,他们都一直就消费者问题保持着融洽的关系。

“我认为这是她了解情况的主要部分,我只是认为这与拜登总统的经历非常不同——并不是说他在这些问题上表现不佳。他确实很擅长,”沃伦说。“但他较少考虑机构的权力,而更多地考虑参议院的权力,因为那是他长期的家。”

所有谈到哈里斯的人都指出,拜登政府确实在国会通过了重要的两党立法,她与拜登一起参与了这些一揽子计划的谈判。在过去几年中,随着民主党失去对众议院的控制,拜登也采取了更多行政行动,包括一些类似于她在 2019 年提出的行动。他们希望这些经历也能为哈里斯的总统任期提供参考。

“她一直陪在他身边,他们已经签署了非常重大的立法,”特拉华州参议员克里斯·库恩斯 (Chris Coons) 说,他是拜登的密友,也曾与哈里斯共事。“两党合作的可能性是乔·拜登深信不疑的事情……我还认为,一个曾经担任过检察官并管理过一个非常大州的司法部长办公室的人,在就职时会有不同的担忧和优先事项。”

一些曾与哈里斯共事的人希望,她在华盛顿的较短任期将给白宫带来更大的紧迫感,让他们关注气候变化等关键的进步问题,并采取新的行动方式。

罗德岛州民主党参议员谢尔顿·怀特豪斯 (Sheldon Whitehouse) 表示:“拜登一直致力于打造自己的品牌,他的团队也忠于这个品牌。我认为卡玛拉对特定品牌的束缚要小得多,她现在可以打造自己的品牌了。”

题图:副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯 (Kamala Harris) 的履历清楚地表明,她的直觉比拜登总统更倾向于进步。TING SHEN/BLOOMBERG

附原英文报道:

Kamala Harris is running on Joe Biden’s record, but she’d likely be a different kind of president

By Tal Kopan Globe Staff,Updated July 28, 2024 

WASHINGTON — In 2019, as Joe Biden took on his then-rival Kamala Harris over the legality of her proposal to use executive orders on gun control in a presidential primary debate, Harris retorted: “Hey, Joe, instead of saying, ‘No, we can’t,’ let’s say, ‘Yes we can.’ ”

Of course, Harris would go on to join Biden, the eventual nominee, as vice president. She has served in lockstep with him for 3½ years and is now, with his endorsement, running for president largely on their administration’s accomplishments. Republicans are also seeking to tie her to the administration’s vulnerabilities, such as border security and the persistent high cost of living.

But the moment on that debate stage is a window into the subtle ways she is likely to approach the presidency differently than Biden, likely less beholden to the traditions and norms of the Senate and more aggressive with executive power, reflective of the generational shift and differences in resumés between them.

“Joe Biden still carries with him, I think, this nostalgia for the days when . . . the collegiality of the Senate would carry the day and a million compromises would be made,” said Democratic Representative Jared Huffman, who has long worked with Harris as a representative of California. “Those days are just long gone. So I think Kamala Harris is forged in this newer era, which unfortunately is much more polarized and tribal and requires a bit of a different approach.”

Now, in bypassing a challenge for the Democratic nomination, she won’t have to get into deep specifics on her plans to draw a contrast with Trump during the sprint to November. Her campaign and White House staff declined an interview request and pointed to her remarks on the campaign trail.

But her record makes clear that her instincts lean more progressive than Biden’s, as was evidenced during her last presidential run, when the pair butted heads as rivals over how to approach signature issues like health care and preventing gun violence.

And beyond the policy specifics, what emerges is a more muscular view of the power of the presidency.

To close the gap in salary by gender, in 2019 she proposed creating an “equal pay certification” that companies could apply for and requiring it for federal contracts. On immigration policy, she laid out a set of plans that would vastly expand protections and paths to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children as well as undocumented family of US citizens, all without Congress. On gun violence prevention, Harris declared she’d give Congress 100 days to pass legislation and then would pursue a suite of executive actions. Despite their 2019 clash over the idea, Biden later in his term enacted some similar measures.

Harris also embraced the idea of ending the 60-vote threshold to pass legislation in the Senate to pass climate change legislation, and signaled openness to overhauling the Supreme Court, both of which Biden was more hesitant to support.

She’s also been the administration’s top messenger on abortion rights since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, both because of her longtime work on the issue and Biden’s hesitance on it.

Former employees and colleagues of Harris describe her as someone more focused on policy outcomes than the process it takes to get there. They say she demands her staff break down proposals into concrete terms for an average American, and believes voters also care more about tangible changes than political process.

Even her own life story as a barrier-breaking woman of color and daughter of immigrants changes her perspective on Washington tradition, said her former aide Rachel Palermo.

“The vice president believes that just because something has always been done a certain way doesn’t mean it has to be done that way moving forward,” Palermo said. “The fact that she’s been the first in so many of her roles embodies that idea.”

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said she first met Harris nearly 15 years ago, well before either had joined the Senate, when Harris was California attorney general and Warren was helping to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren recalled they had “daily” calls about how state attorneys general could use their powers to take on big banks. They’ve kept up their rapport around consumer issues in the years since, in the Senate and after Harris joined the administration.

“I think of that as a large part of what informs her, and I just think of it as very different from President Biden’s experience — not to say he hasn’t been really good on these issues. He has,” Warren said. “But he thinks less about the power of the agencies and more about the power of the Senate, because that was his longtime home.”

All who spoke of Harris noted the Biden administration did, in fact, get major bipartisan legislation through Congress, and she was involved alongside Biden in negotiating those packages. Biden has also come around to more executive actions, including some similar to what she proposed in 2019, in the past few years as Democrats lost control of the House. They expect those experiences to also inform Harris’s approach to the presidency.

“She has been right next to him as they’ve gotten signed into law really dramatic legislation,” said Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a confidante of Biden’s who also served with Harris. “The possibilities of bipartisanship is something Joe Biden deeply believes in . . . . I also think someone who’s been a prosecutor and run an attorney general’s office for a very large state has a different set of concerns and priorities as they come into office.”

Some who have worked with Harris hope her shorter tenure in Washington will bring an even greater sense of urgency to the White House on key progressive issues such as climate change, as well as new ways to act on them.

“Biden had a brand that he had been working on since, ever, and his team was loyal to that brand,” said Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. “I think that restraint of having a particular brand is much less the case with Kamala, who’s in a position now to create her own brand.”

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