{"id":157143,"date":"2024-08-24T22:03:50","date_gmt":"2024-08-25T06:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=157143"},"modified":"2024-08-24T10:10:49","modified_gmt":"2024-08-24T18:10:49","slug":"kamala-harris-lbj-the-passage-of-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=157143","title":{"rendered":"Kamala Harris, LBJ & The Passage Of Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philosopher Iskra Filever writes Aug. 24, 2024<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n…when circumstances change, so does our behavior. The very most humorous comedian is likely to appear subdued if put on trial, and a person who scores high on social anxiety may be relaxed and confident in the company of intimate friends. Biden\u2019s decision to step down and endorse Harris changed the circumstances, and the new situation is eliciting different behavior from Harris. The old Harris was Vice President. A Vice President\u2019s job is to play second fiddle, do no harm, and make sure not to draw attention away from the president. The Harris In a New Key is a presidential nominee. A top-of-the-ticket nominee, unlike a VP, is allowed and indeed encouraged to remain in the limelight and go full throttle on the political highway.<\/p>\n

In addition, and relatedly, people like winners. (Perhaps, we have evolved to.) Years ago, when Barack Obama was competing for the Democratic nomination with Hillary Clinton, a Clinton supporter said to me after the first primary, \u201cGuess who won!\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I answered. \u201cWas it Clinton?\u201d \u201cBarack Obama,\u201d he replied, and went on, \u201cAnd this victory makes him interesting.\u201d While Obama was the same person he had been the day before, I knew what my interlocutor meant: Something had changed. It was as though new victory light was shining on him while the light illuminating Clinton was getting dimmer. People wanted to see more of him and less of her. He had become more interesting.<\/p>\n

I would conjecture that Biden\u2019s endorsement of Harris had an effect parallel to that of Obama\u2019s first primary victory: Harris became more attractive and better able to command attention. There is a halo around a person likely to be coronated. <\/p>\n

…Young people created their own version of candidate Harris, a version tailor-made to suit their needs.<\/p>\n

It is notoriously difficult for politicians to relate to younger voters or young people in general, though (often awkward) attempts continue…<\/p>\n

Fortunately for Harris, however, she didn\u2019t have to find a way to appeal to the younger crowd, because they rebranded her. They didn\u2019t simply meet her half-way but walked the entire distance. Popstar Charlie XCX declared on social media that Harris is \u201cbrat.\u201d \u201cBrat,\u201d kind young people explained later, meant that her vibes are summery, chartreuse-colored; that she is not too prim and proper; is perhaps a tad \u201cmessy\u201d and \u201cvolatile\u201d but in what psychologists call ego-syntonic way \u2013 she is comfortable and mildly amused by her own messiness and maybe, of that of life.<\/p>\n

The \u201cKamala is brat\u201d meme was precisely what the internet had been craving. It was a boon to the Harris campaign. All that the campaign needed to do at that point was run with it, and they did.<\/p>\n

What made this re-branding possible?<\/p>\n

I will mention two things. One is that Harris, as a person of mixed race, has what in a white-majority country may be seen as a \u201ccoolness\u201d factor. She looks different and therefore, non-boring. Boringness may seem like a virtue to those who prioritize stability but not to those who look for excitement, which is most young people. (Whether Harris is actually different in non-superficial ways from any average candidate is a separate question.)<\/p>\n

The second point is that Harris has been a low-profile Vice President and had, for this reason, up until quite recently, remained mostly unknown. Before the Biden endorsement, many knew what her laughter sounds like but not much else. She was a blank canvas. This made it possible for re-branders to project onto her whatever qualities they wished to see. Like many a lover who becomes enamored with an object for the first time, they chose to project something of themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Robert Caro wrote in his 2012 book, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson<\/a>, about when JFK was assassinated, LBJ’s behavior dramatically changed:<\/p>\n

…very little conversation, \u201cno lost motion; it wasn\u2019t necessary for us to talk.\u201d To Marie Fehmer, her boss was \u201ca changed man, transformed.\u201d At first she couldn\u2019t understand why he looked so different from the Lyndon Johnson for whom she had been working, but she came to realize, she says, that the very movements of his body were different; that instead of the awkward, almost lunging, strides and \u201cflailing\u201d movements of his arms that had previously often characterized Johnson under tension, now his stride was shorter, measured, and his arms were staying by his sides, hardly moving at all; that \u201cthere was no flailing,\u201d that \u201conly his head moved. It wasn\u2019t just that there was no flailing emotionally. There was no flailing physically either. It was as if he was actively controlling his body.\u201d Not only his movements but his voice was transformed, she says. It had none of the impatience in it that was often \u2014 usually \u2014 present, none of the anger and rage into which impatience so often morphed, none of any of the emotions with which it was generally filled. \u201cHis voice was not low so much as it was level \u2014 it didn\u2019t fluctuate in tone. He was keeping it under control, calm.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was an iron control, a discipline that, during those three days, never slipped. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen him as controlled, as self – disciplined, as careful and as moderate as he\u2019s been this week,\u201d Bill Moyers told Time \u2019s Loye Miller. \u201cHe\u2019s remained calmer \u2026 he\u2019s been more careful to sort out and reason his feelings and his thoughts, and he\u2019s been good to work with. You know very well how he used to thrash around and blow his top so often. It seemed like he had a clock inside him with an alarm that told him at least once an hour that it was time to go chew somebody out. But he hasn\u2019t lost his temper once since two PM last Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is remarkable, really,\u201d Miller reported to Time \u2019s editors in New York. \u201cSome of us who have seen Lyndon at his most cantankerous cantankerous in times of lesser stress were wondering what sort of tantrums he must be having behind the office doors as the immense pressures of his new job and necessity for seizing it quickly bore down on him. But \u2026 my every inquiry brings the reply\u201d that there were no tantrums \u2014 none of the cursing, none of the glass – throwing, none of the vicious rages. And the replies Miller received were accurate. There was never a crack in the calmness, the aura of command, the sense of purpose. The few reporters who were allowed to spend time in 274 during those days saw it for themselves, and those of them who had known Johnson for years were startled by what they saw now. Hurrying from 274 to Time \u2019s offices to describe Johnson in a wire to New York, John Steele used adjectives like \u201cdirect, calm, deliberate,\u201d and nouns like \u201ccomposure and sense of being collected.\u201d Hugh Sidey felt he was showing more of such qualities than he had ever demonstrated before. \u201cThere were questions, decisions to be made, just flooding in on him one after the other,\u201d he says. \u201cHe just handled them, one after the other,\u201d without a pause. Business in 274 \u201cseems to be progressing matter – of – factly,\u201d another reporter wrote, \u201cand actually quite well compared to the tumultuous office atmosphere which has often surrounded Johnson in the past.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philosopher Iskra Filever writes Aug. 24, 2024: …when circumstances change, so does our behavior. The very most humorous comedian is likely to appear subdued if put on trial, and a person who scores high on social anxiety may be relaxed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t