There is Something Special About Kamala Harris and The Campaign She is Running

She is Rising to the Challenges of an Extraordinarily Fraught Moment in US History

Sportswriters these days have developed a taste for the term “generational talent.” Language is like that, as vulnerable to fads as any other area of culture. Shohei Ohtani is a “generational talent.” Caitlin Clark is a “generational talent.” Katie Ledecky is a “generational talent.”

In a field where hype is everything, you need terms like that, terms that add new levels to the ever ascending hierarchy of descriptions of greatness. Once there were just stars. And then there were all-stars and superstars and, every so often, megastars, the best of whom we now call “goats” for “greatest of all time.” And somewhere tucked in right beneath goat but above superstars are these “generational talents,” presumably individuals so gifted they come along once ever twenty or thirty years or so.

We don’t rank political leaders the same way. Oh, historians will periodically rank presidents. And there are some figures who are regularly referred to as “great presidents” just as once upon a time if you were a really good king or queen you might get the label “the great” attached to your own. But we don’t tend to make lists of all stars…perhaps because in times like these they would be too short or the picking of those to be honored would become too contentiously partisan.

But as is in sports, there is a tendency toward hype and also toward what I would call temporal narcissism. That is the inclination to think one’s own time period was the most important ever, our problems the greatest ever, our innovations the most consequential ever, etc.

Time is important in making such judgments—if we really feel compelled to make them. Perspective matters. We don’t know many of the consequences of actions taken within our lifetimes. Sometimes a big “loss” turns out to be a long-term win. (Vietnam has embraced a market economy and is not in the orbit of any rival state to ours.) Sometimes a big “win” turns out to lead to something very unwinlike (First Iraq War meet Second Iraq War meet endless wars, etc.) Without knowing such the long-term consequences of their actions it is hard to evaluate a presidency or the role of other leaders.