Pence and Harris, number one
In the second presidential debate, the candidates for Vice-President of the United States, the Republican Mike Pence, who is already Vice-President, and the Democrat Kamala Harris, who may be Vice-President for the first time in history, offered the public a promising speech and a solvent image. What the also former vice-president Joe Biden, now number one and a losing Democratic candidate, and the president who, having never known what it meant to be number two, may now cease to be number one, had not achieved. Thousands of voters interested in the reasons much more than the unreasonable, will certify with their vote if they have opted for the Democrats that Kamala Harris represents with her values of respect for gender diversity and identity and the charisma of a free and committed woman, or if they opt for the Republicans like Mike Pence, convincing in their ideas and moderate in their way of expressing them. Good managers, respectful of institutions and democratically convinced.
The most recent history of vice presidents in the United States is not always reassuring. Their record is rather mixed. Nixon, who was Eisenhower's, lost the 1960 elections in a television debate, as the chroniclers recall, with the young Kennedy. Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy after his assassination, has gone down in history for his relentless bombing of Vietnam, while mounting his internal Great Society project by opening with him the San Andreas fault of the cultural wars, which still persist in an America that has not yet resolved, five decades later, the rift between rich and poor, or between whites and blacks. Ford assumed the presidency in his pants after the Watergate that had shown all the shames of Nixon and American democracy. Bush senior, after knocking down the Berlin Wall with his number one man Reagan, was unable to cross the Rubicon of globalisation in 1992. And Al Gore, after crossing it with Bill Clinton on the information highways, stayed like Moses on Mount Nebo for having committed the sin of losing a handful of votes in Florida.
Joe Biden has a chance to regain power for the Democrats, after Hillary Clinton closed his options for the 2016 election race. A woman who did not reach the presidency or vice-presidency, but was Secretary of State in the first Obama administration, where she played a very unfortunate role in supporting the Arab springs and in implementing the then so-called Smart power, which proved a resounding failure. The Republican Condolezza Rice, Bush Jr.'s right-hand woman, who was also Secretary of State during the hard times and the end of his mandate, and Madelaine Albright, Clinton's Secretary of State during some of the best years of America's most recent democracy, far surpassed the former first lady and eternal Democratic candidate for the presidency in the early years of the 21st century.
But little election stories are not always respectful of the great history of politics. Truman, Roosevelt's vice president for a few months during the Second World War, found himself responsible for sealing the war with pacts and atomic bombs when Roosevelt died, and immediately afterwards for initiating the Cold War and the tortuous path of much of the world towards democracy. On his re-election, he was on the verge of defeat. Nixon opened the doors to China and short-circuited the possibility of a communist axis in Eurasia, but has remained in the political history of the United States as the worst president in memory. George Bush, the best prepared and most moderate Republican leader, was overtaken by an inexperienced local salon politician, whose surname was Clinton.
Kamala Harris and Mike Pence represent the face of America against the cross of politics. Should Biden or Trump win the election, public opinion is calm and confident. Because behind the imposing, pathetic or insubstantial figure of the man who is going to be the most powerful man in the world, there is the plural and calm shadow of the vice-presidents. Number one, behind the two.