By Steve Sailer
02/03/2021
Earlier: Kamala Harris: Working Girl Makes Good
From The New York Times book review:
How Kamala Harris Rose — and Rose
Reviewed By Lisa McGirr
Feb. 1, 2021KAMALA’S WAY
An American Life
By Dan Morain… Dan Morain, for decades a reporter for The Los Angeles Times, recounts stories like these in “Kamala’s Way,” and his insider’s view provides a revealing portrait of the people and events surrounding Harris’s rise to political stardom. Morain paints Bay Area Democratic politics as a swampy world where schmoozing with potential billionaire funders and sitting on the right boards were essential to climbing the rungs. He details Harris’s liaison with the self-described “Ayatollah of the Assembly” and former San Francisco mayor, Willie Brown. Harris dated Brown in 1994 and 1995, splitting with him after his election as mayor. He was 30 years her senior. But the numerous stories about Brown feel misplaced, distracting from what should have been a tighter focus on Harris herself.
The reviewer doesn’t want to come out and flat out say that biographers of the Vice President should simply cover up the fact that her fabulous political career was launched in Willie Brown’s bed, but she wants to imply it.
Morain paints Harris as a pragmatic, ambitious politician who “took positions when she needed to and when those stands might help her politically,” but who was also “adept at not taking stands when doing so was not politically necessary.” Despite his inclusion of stories that show Harris’s warmth outside the limelight, his biography is not fawning. Nor is it very personal. Morain was not able to interview Harris or her family, but says he relied on “dozens of sources” with “firsthand knowledge.”
This book is unlikely to satisfy readers enamored of the nation’s barrier-breaking vice president, who may find Morain’s judgments at times unduly critical, and his use of phrases like “brusque and antagonistic style” and “brash confidence” as distinctly gendered. At the same time, “Kamala’s Way” could appeal to aficionados of California politics who want a better understanding of the high-powered political world where Harris’s national star rose.
It’s almost as if Kamala is not herself a very interesting individual, she just happened to have the right combination of ambition and Intersectional Pokemon Points to get herself one heartbeat away from the Presidency.
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