Harris' Bad Bet on the Foreign Policy Status Quo

Harris decided fairly early on to side with the defenders of the foreign policy status quo.

Stephen Wertheim offers some advice to Harris about what she should do if she wins next week:

Ms. Harris won’t break sharply with her boss, the sitting president, while on the campaign trail. If she takes his seat in January, however, she should unburden herself of orthodoxy, out-innovate her opponents and create a foreign policy fit, at long last, for the 21st century. By setting the needs of Americans front and center at every turn, she will strip Trumpism of its allure and deliver the global leadership that the country craves. Call it America first, but for real.

Wertheim’s advice is sound, but it will likely fall on deaf ears. Harris decided fairly early on to side with the defenders of the foreign policy status quo. The party convention and her acceptance speech confirmed that she was going to run as a hawkish Democrat, and that is what she has done. She has shown no interest in policy innovation, and she has stubbornly resisted any departure from Biden’s policies even when it is in her political self-interest to distance herself from the president. If Harris wins, she will conclude that running as a status quo hawk was the right play and she won’t see any reason to change course.