Second paragraph of third chapter:

She [Harris’ mother] would be the first to point out the practical considerations that it was a smart investment. But it was so much more than that. It was about her earning a full slice of the American Dream.

This was Harris’s manifesto for her unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign, which of course ended with her being selected as Vice-President by Joe Biden, after the book had been published (the cover blurb of my 2021 printing has been updated). It’s an interesting contrast with Trump’s Great Again, which I read back in 2017, in the sense that The Truths We Hold is far better written, more coherent, and more convincing in terms of actual execution of policy ideas.

Harris frames her story as swinging between the details of her upbringing by a single immigrant mother, and her rise up the California legal profession to the point where she became attorney-general and then senator. It’s a very convincing book, looking at the big problems facing the USA – opiate addiction, health care, national security, economic insecurity – and also giving examples of her own ability to cut through the system and get things done.

I must say that I found it very encouraging. One of my disappointments with the Biden presidency (as with the new Starmer premiership in the UK) has been the feeling that there isn’t a core vision other than not screwing up as badly as the previous guys. Harris wants to transform society, and sees government as a means of effecting positive change. She has no time for culture wars and just wants to get on with doing things. It’s consistent with the picture we got from Tuesday night’s debate. I’m aware that her record is not beyond question, but I’m very reassured by the overall picture. You can get it here.

Incidentally, some trivia from my Presidential spouses page. The oldest President or Vice-President at the time of their first marriage is none other than Kamala Harris, who married Doug Emhoff two months before her 50th birthday (beating Grover Cleveland, who married 21-year-old Frances Folsom eleven weeks after his 49th birthday, just over a year after he became President for the first time). The oldest person to marry a President or Vice-President as their own first marriage was Melania Trump, who married Donald nine months after her 34th birthday (she beats Bess Truman, 34 and four months old when she married Harry). The President / Vice-President to have lived longest after the death of their first spouse is Joe Biden, whose wife Neilia died in a car crash in December 1972. (Biden of course has remarried. Martin Van Buren and Thomas Jefferson both lived as widowers for over 43 years without remarrying. Like Biden, both served as Vice-President and then President.)

This year’s vice-presidential candidates, J.D. Vance and Tim Walz, both married within a couple of months of their 30th birthdays, and both married women two years younger than them; neither of these points is staistically unusual. If elected, Vance will be the third youngest Vice-President on inauguration day, and Walz the twelfth oldest. Here’s hoping.