White House forced to ‘recalibrate’ desk chairs for Harris’s height: Report
Katherine Doyle
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Among the challenges Vice President Kamala Harris encountered upon taking office was desk furniture sized for the “average male height” of her predecessors, according to a new report.
The frustration led the Biden administration to order new desk chairs to accommodate Harris, who is 5 feet, 2 inches tall.
Jamal Simmons, Harris’s communications director until late last year, told the New York Times that the desk chairs in the vice president’s office needed to be changed to fit her frame “instead of the ‘average male height’” of past vice presidents. Harris is the first female vice president.
“She forces us to recalibrate our assumptions,” Simmons explained.
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The account comes as Democrats question Harris’s future political prospects with increasing alarm.
“[T]he painful reality for Ms. Harris is that in private conversations over the last few months, dozens of Democrats … said she had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country,” according to the New York Times. “Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her.”
President Joe Biden is expected to formalize his reelection plans in the coming months with Harris at his side, with outgoing chief of staff Ron Klain forecasting the decision in remarks at the White House last week.
But absent a final decision, Democrats are questioning whether Harris has the political acumen to succeed him.
“She has never been a strong campaigner and has benefited from good timing and poor California opposition in the past,” a source who has been close to Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) since the start of his political career told the Washington Examiner.
The sentiment spilled into public last month when Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) stopped short of a full endorsement when asked whether Harris should remain Biden’s 2024 running mate during an interview with Boston public radio station WGBH.
Warren is not the only prominent Democratic woman appearing to question the abilities of the person poised to succeed Biden.
“Two Democrats recalled private conversations in which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lamented that Ms. Harris could not win because she does not have the political instincts to clear a primary field,” the New York Times reported.
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Klain defended Harris last week, saying he wished all people could get to know her as he had. “I would say she has been the best vice president in history,” he added.