Kamala Harris made history as VP, but less visible in office

Whatever happened to Kamala Harris?

She shattered all kinds of ceiling glass when Joe Biden made California’s junior senator his running mate and Harris was elected vice president. Since then, she’s largely receded from Washington’s daily doings and the cliff-hanging drama that’s surrounded the fight over the president’s agenda.

Part of the answer is simple: What happened to Harris is she became vice president.

Even as she shoulders an array of policy portfolios, even as she visits Paris this week seeking to address the administration’s ruptured relations with France, it remains a fact that the No. 2 job in the White House is inherently a diminishing one.

It’s neither racist nor misogynistic to point that out when the jobholder happens to be Harris.

Virtually every vice president in modern history — save Dick Cheney, who played an unusually prominent role guiding defense and foreign policy under President George W. Bush — has looked smaller than when he or she accepted the position.

That’s because a main job requirement is stepping away from the spotlight, except when cheerleading for the president and his agenda.

This requires varying degrees of sycophancy. After four years of emasculation, Mike Pence didn’t seem to mind that his boss, President Trump, wasn’t at all upset that some of Trump’s supporters wished to kill Pence for refusing to illegally overturn Biden’s election. Pence, whatever else he accomplishes in life, has managed to set new standards for tolerance and self-abasement.

But there were different, heightened expectations for Harris, chiefly because of her groundbreaking election. No one like her — the first woman, first Black person, first Asian American elected vice president — has ever moved through Washington’s uppermost reaches. Her every move would be unprecedented and surely, it seemed, merit special notice and great amounts of news coverage.

But that one cardinal rule — to never purposely overshadow the president, or seem eager to take his place — doesn’t yield to history or celebrity. That’s especially true when the chief executive is a brittle 78-year-old.

So ever since taking office, Harris has made humility a top item on her public-facing agenda, alongside the assignments — voting rights, space exploration, women in the workforce, immigration from Central America, and more — the president has given her. It’s no surprise. Caution has long been a hallmark of Harris’ political career, and the subservient nature of the vice presidency, as well as the scrutiny of Biden loyalists sensitive to the merest hint of personal ambition, reinforce that inclination.

(There is a long history of tensions between presidential and vice presidential staff members, and the Biden White House is no exception.)

Another reason for Harris’ fade to the background is her thin Washington resume.

Typically, vice presidents are chosen because they are perceived as “doing something…