U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is attempting to join a select cohort of Americans who served as senators before going on to become president of the United States. Beginning with James Monroe of Virginia, who was elected the nation’s fifth president in 1816, only 16 other people have claimed the two titles. Just three of them—Warren G. Harding of Ohio, John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Barack Obama of Illinois—were elected while still serving in the upper chamber.
The list of senators who were unsuccessful in winning election as president or winning their party’s nomination is much longer. Since 1963, the only former senators to win the general election have been Lyndon B. Johnson (who became an incumbent because of Kennedy’s assassination), Richard Nixon, Obama, and Joe Biden. In contrast, it has been more common for Senate veterans to fall short. The losers from this period include Barry Goldwater (Ariz.), Hubert Humphrey (Minn.), George McGovern (S.D.), Walter Mondale (Minn.), Robert Dole (Kan.), Al Gore (Tenn.), John Kerry (Mass.), John McCain (Ariz.), and Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), not to mention all of the primary candidates who crashed and burned.
Among the most iconic moments when a senatorial record turned into a heavy political anchor was 20 years ago, in 2004, when President George W. Bush eviscerated Kerry as a flip-flopper who moved whichever way he believed was the most popular position. The senator had been an opponent of the war in Iraq, Bush said—even though in 2002 Kerry voted in favor of authorizing the use of force. The nuance of voting for a resolution based on the expectation that the delegation of authority would be used responsibly didn’t play well on the hustings. “In which direction would John Kerry lead?” the quizzical narrator asks in one classic campaign spot. “He bragged about voting for the $87 billion to support our troops before he voted against it. He voted for education reform and now opposes it. … John Kerry, whichever way the wind blows.”
The difficulty in making the leap to the highest office is surprising, because serving in the Senate has always been an aspiration for elected officials. The upper chamber, which until 1913 did not have direct elections, was meant to be the more deliberative and calmer legislative branch. It has been said that George Washington perceived the job of the Senate as being to “cool” the passions of the House. Senators, who did not have to cater to the masses, could focus on the major questions of the day. They served six years, rather than two-year terms, which insulated them from the incessant pressures of politics that their colleagues in the House of Representatives faced. Even after the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913, which implemented direct elections, senators thought of themselves—and were often treated accordingly—as the distinguished and nationally oriented members of Congress. Legendary senators such as Henry Clay have been revered in the textbooks for their high oratory, and the bias toward the upper chamber has continued to be part of American culture to this day.
Yet as much as the esteemed Senate seems like it would provide a massive national platform for aspiring presidential candidates, working in the institution has tended to saddle people such as Harris with political baggage that opponents have used to undermine them.
The biggest challenge that stems from having served in the Senate revolves around the very nature of democracy. While voters in presidential elections tend to admire qualities such as clarity, consistency, and decisiveness, being an effective senator requires a different set of skills that sometimes makes it difficult to even evaluate success—the skills of being able to negotiate, compromise, and make deals. Kerry’s shifts, inconsistencies, and nuance, for example, were often a product of his willingness to work with Republicans and evolve in his position as conditions changed. He had also proved to be an important voice on foreign policy, defending international alliances as the war in Iraq raged.
Congress reflects the fundamental messiness of the democratic process, where the champions of competing interests, clashing visions, and principled beliefs must find ways to agree on how to handle the major challenges of the day. In the legislative process, the perfect cannot be made the enemy of the good, or so the saying goes.
When senators are not skilled at negotiating and compromising within their own party or with the opposing party, the inevitable result is debilitating gridlock. The New Deal and the Great Society, as well as the recent bursts of legislation in the first years of presidents Obama and Biden, were exceptional moments not the norm. The reality is that much of the history of Congress revolves around the institution having a difficult time achieving legislative breakthroughs. Indeed, in November 1963, as Johnson started to move one of the most sweeping domestic agendas through Congress, beginning with the civil rights bill Kennedy had proposed, commentators were complaining of how a conservative coalition of Southern Democrats and Midwestern Republicans were blocking progress on almost everything.
Rigidly sticking to original positions rarely serves elected officials who intend to have an impact on collective problem-solving. Very often, being a successful senator means accepting positions—or at least endorsing positions—that they once opposed. At other times, success entails refraining from taking credit for something. Or being effective can mean working intensely behind the scenes but then saying nothing in public, leading many voters to think that you have been inactive. This is the kind of strategic maneuvering and negotiation that has been responsible for some of the biggest legislative breakthroughs in our history. The passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, for instance, required liberal Democrats to temporarily abandon their quest for national health insurance, narrowing their focus to elderly Americans and agreeing to live with key elements of the private health care market, such as allowing hospitals as well as physicians to determine their own rates.
A substantial amount of the work of Congress is relatively transparent compared to the executive branch. Even before 1913, when senators were still not directly elected, this was true. The Congressional Record, first published in 1873, has provided ongoing documentation of the statements and debates that take place on the floor. In 1890, the Senate started to provide a certain number of passes for visitors to sit in the gallery. The ratification of the 17th Amendment was a product of progressive-era reformers who believed that the popular election of senators was more democratic and could undercut some of the corruption that had been exposed by muckraking journalists who documented corrupt deals between senators and the state legislatures that had appointed them. Once they were subject to popular elections, senators had to spend much more time interacting with their constituents and appearing in the media to maximize their odds for reelection.
Capitalizing on 1970s disclosure reforms, a network of nonprofits and think tanks formed to track roll call votes, campaign contributions, and relationships with lobbyists. In 1978, the House authorized cameras into the chamber, CSPAN was created in 1979, and then the Senate opened its chamber to television in 1986. Consequently, the public is exposed to how their senators shift positions, backtrack on issues, and openly support watered-down compromises. We can even watch them in real time. Most of this is not untoward but just politics. As the political scientists John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse argued in their classic 1995 book, Congress as Public Enemy, Congress is the most democratic branch of government. Democracy is ugly. In the post-Watergate era, when distrust of government has been a defining element of American political culture, senators are connected to an institution that doesn’t hold great esteem.
Since Watergate, there has been an additional obstacle for senators. Ever since former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter ran his historic campaign in 1976 in which he ousted several prominent Senate veterans (such as Indiana’s Birch Bayh and Idaho’s Frank Church) in the primaries and then knocked off an incumbent president, his anti-Washington framework has endured. “It is time for us to take a new look at our own government,” Carter said in his presidential nomination acceptance speech, “to strip away the secrecy, to expose the unwarranted pressure of lobbyists, to eliminate waste, to release our civil servants from bureaucratic chaos.” Carter’s anti-Washington campaign continued with former California Gov. Ronald Reagan, who in 1980 gave the theme a conservative twist by painting government as an obstacle to economic growth, freedom, and individual rights. The virtue that senators would like to boast about on the campaign trail has to do with governing experience. But once that experience was weaponized as a problem in campaigns, there was frequently a senatorial badge of dishonor that could prove to be debilitating. It was easy to use the connection to the Senate—as Bush did to Kerry—to paint a picture of one more elite who could not be trusted with the keys of power. When a senator, Obama, won four years later, he had barely been in office.
Other presidents who were former senators who had taken on some other job in between, something that enabled them to demonstrate different kinds of leadership skills associated with the executive branch. This was certainly the case with Biden, whose two terms as vice president under Obama were essential to what his supporters touted when defeating then-President Donald Trump in 2020.
Harris will have some work to do in the weeks ahead to prevent the Trump campaign from using her senatorial career against her.
The advantage Harris enjoys is that, like Biden, her time as vice president can be an asset. She must fight back as Trump tries to frame these years, as he immediately attempted to do by going after her work as the “border czar.” Harris’s team needs to turn attention to her role at the Munich Security Conference, the release of the hostages from Russia, and her work on reproductive rights since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and the right to an abortion, as well as her extensive role for the administration on policies related to artificial intelligence. At the same time, they should not run away from her work as a senator, particularly her role in judicial hearings.
If the vice president wins in November, the combination of her victory as well as Biden’s in 2020 might just encourage other talented senators to give serious thought to a future on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
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