DANIEL MULHALL former Irish Ambassador who served in Washington DC from 2017-2022, and in London from 2013-2017 gives the current state of play in the race to the White House
A MARATHON and a sprint both involve running, but they require very different qualities. The campaign for the US Presidency is the ultimate political marathon. When I was Ambassador in Washington, I remember hosting the then former Vice President, Joe Biden, at our Embassy in the autumn of 2018 when he was already being pressed by journalists about his intentions for 2020, more than a year before the first votes were due to be cast in the Democratic Primary. In a typical US election cycle, aspiring candidates can be seen poking around in Iowa and New Hampshire, two early primary locations, years ahead of the vote, trying to build momentum and funding for a potential Presidential run.
This year, the anticipated two-man marathon between Trump and Biden (both advanced marathon runners in biological terms!) was gearing up for its closing stages when the race plan was thrown out the window and the marathon suddenly became a sprint, albeit one that still has two months to run. So far, Kamala Harris has made a very good fist of the unexpected opportunity provided by President Biden’s withdrawal. Indeed she has surprised the many who were underwhelmed by her previous bid for the Presidency, which fizzled out before the first votes were cast in February 2020, and by her low-profile Vice Presidency. Had President Biden backed out earlier in the game, there is no guarantee that she would have been the Democrats’ choice to face off against Donald Trump in November.
Harris has hardly put a foot wrong since coming unopposed out of the starting blocks. Her Vice-Presidential pick, Tim Walz, was plucked from the relative obscurity of a mid-west governorship, but, with his homespun qualities, he is looking like an inspired choice, complementing Harris in important ways and filling gaps where she, as a California liberal, could be vulnerable.
Kamala Harris has benefited from the immense sense of relief felt by Democrats that they would no longer be saddled with a candidate that many (but not all) believed could not beat Trump in November. The Democratic convention in Chicago was a triumphant showpiece with waves of enthusiasm welling around the vast Chicago arena. Harris has made strides in the polls too, and she has now either drawn level or pulled slightly ahead of her rival.
Spoiler Alert. The coming election remains a cliffhanger. It is unwise to read too much into the undoubted success of Harris’s stellar coronation in Chicago. Those events are fast-fading affairs. It’s only six weeks since the Republican convention in Milwaukee, also rated a success, but people other than political junkies would now struggle to remember a single thing about it. The value of conventions lies in their capacity to fire up the party faithful. Both conventions probably achieved that, and there will no shortage of enthusiastic foot-soldiers on both sides trudging the country in the coming weeks striving to get their party’s vote out. There has also been an influx of funding, especially to the Harris campaign, that will enable both parties to mount extensive and expensive advertising campaigns. By European standards, US election ads can be shockingly aggressive. Not for the faint-hearted!
Even in a sprint to the finishing line, there is time for momentum to shift. Trump seems a tad forlorn at present as he bemoans the abrupt change in his political fortunes, but he remains a formidable figure who has succeeded against all the odds in maintaining a vice-like control over America’s Grand Old Party. Even as a diminished figure, and no longer the colourful insurgent he was in 2016, expect him to find his campaigning feet again as we enter the final stretch.
Kamala Harris will face bumps on the road ahead and her fate will be decided by how she manages them. She has yet to do a serious media interview and has in the past shown some frailty in that area. I will be keen to see if her performance has benefited from four years of being ‘in the room’ as Vice President. I remember introducing her some years back to a group of young Frederick Douglass Fellows, who were about to set off for a visit to Ireland. I was impressed with the passionate pep talk she gave them, in which she urged those young people to follow in Douglass’s footsteps and return to America as he had done in the 1840s, equipped with fresh ideas and a passion for change.
Then there is the looming showdown on 10 September, when the two have agreed to a TV debate. It promises to be a very different affair from its predecessor in July that became Biden’s nemesis. Hold on to your hat between now and 5 November for what will be a topsy turvy battle for the White House. Whether we like it or not, a US presidential election matters to the rest of the world like none other. Although there has been precious little focus on foreign policy in the campaign so far, the result will have a big impact on Ireland, Britain and the European Union, as we all have a vital stake in stable transatlantic relations.
Remember too that the US election will not be decided through the pyrotechnics of mass rallies and TV debates, but on the ground in the suburbs of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Madison, Detroit and Atlanta, where Harris will hope to pile up votes, and in the non-metropolitan areas of the swing states where fervent support for Donald Trump continues to flourish.
Daniel Mulhall is a retired Irish Ambassador who served in Washington DC from 2017-2022, and in London from 2013-2017.
