At the weekend, The Guardian reported an interview in which Kamala Harris said:
I am not done. … I have lived my entire career as a life of service, and it's in my bones.
Staggeringly, despite having lost the presidency in 2024, Harris is still framing the presidency as her inevitable reward for her public service credentials.
This instinct, best described as the belief that high office is a prize for the accomplished, a rightful place for the initiated elite, is deeply embedded in the political culture of the USA, and to some degree the UK. What it reveals is a critical aspect of how political elites conceive of power. A number of issues seem worth noting.
First, there is a very obvious sense of entitlement in elite political circles. In the case of Harris, her quote implies (and it seems clear that she believes) that her career of “service” qualifies her for the top job. She speaks as though the presidency awaits her because of her résumé, rather than being a role she would accept if she won a popular mandate and accepted public accountability.
Saying so, Harris is not alone in this framing: it is echoed across the elite spectrum. For example, Donald Trump (despite ideological differences) also maintains the language of "I deserve to lead" and of elevation rather than service. There is a pattern: power is seen as the endpoint of a career, rather than the beginning of a duty.
Second, entitlement in this sense is underpinned by a neoliberal mindset: the individual elite, by virtue of credentials, networks, history, and positions previously held, claims a right to ascend. The policy content they have to offer (if any) becomes secondary to the claim of entitlement. The presidency is the prize for the supposedly accomplished rather than the necessary tool of structural transformation that the USA might require.
In Harris' case, the argument is that she has served and therefore should lead. But the question must be asked: who has she served, and to what end? If the policies she offers remain within the confines of existing neoliberal frameworks of markets, deregulation, and incrementalism, as is the standard offering of what might be called the Corporate Democrats, then the entitlement she believes she enjoys becomes a self-referential loop: the elite serves the elite and then gains elite status, after which it claims leadership as the reward without ever disrupting the underlying power relations that are in many cases the cause of the malaise the US has faced for so long.
Third, the political economy of entitlement is corrosive. When those in elite circles believe they are owed power, the link to democratic legitimacy is weakened. The risk is that governance becomes less about changing the structural conditions of inequality or about shifting the economic foundations of the state, more about the rotation of elites. Instead of breaking the rule that global capital dictates, as a President who might address the needs of the USA should, the elite politician holding that role instead becomes the de facto gatekeeper of continuity. Their entitled leadership simply reinforces the status quo.
Fourth, we should examine the consequences of this for justice and democracy. One consequence is that the dispossessed remain observers of, and not participants in, the political process. When leadership is framed as a reward for service rather than a responsibility to the disadvantaged, the voices of those without credentials or networks are implicitly marginalised. The result of that is seen in policy stagnation. Entitled elites rarely challenge the economic model that produces inequality; they restore confidence rather than re-imagine structures. So we get modest reforms rather than transformation, and as a result of that, institutional trust erodes. If people believe the game of politics is “who has the right CV” rather than “who answers to us”, then cynicism grows and political engagement declines.
In that case, we must reject the notion that high public office is a prize for the deserving, as Kamala Harris appears to view it. Instead, power must be seen as grounded in an acceptance of responsibility to the many. That means transforming our conception of leadership:
- Leaders must emerge from purpose, and not from privilege. Leaders must show a willingness to disrupt rather than preserve when the status quo clearly does not work.
- The state must reclaim its role, not as facilitator of elite ambition but as guarantor of collective well-being. Belief in progressive tax reform, redistribution of wealth, and public investment in the common good must become the criteria for leadership, and not just status.
- Democratic accountability must be stronger: those whose careers suggest they “deserve” power must prove that that power will not sustain the elite order but challenge it.
In short, the elite entitlement culture that says “I have served, therefore I deserve to lead” must be supplanted by a culture that says “I seek leadership because I accept responsibility for systemic change”. The presidency, or any high office, must not be the trophy for service but the tool for transformation.
In that case, Kamala Harris (and the language she uses) offers a useful lens on elite entitlement. It has to be understood that when she says “I am not done”, the message is: “I am owed this opportunity.” But democracy demands a different message. It requires that a candidate say, “I am ready for the obligation.” If progressive reform is to mean anything, then we must shift the narrative of power from reward to responsibility. That shift matters because the alternative is the continuation of neoliberal governance dressed in new faces, but with the same old logic.
In that case, we need a new generation of leaders who are not simply those who believe they are entitled but are those who can demonstrate that they understand that power is a responsibility, and not a prize. And that is why Zohran Mamdani might be such a shock to the likes of Kamala Harris, because that would seem to be his understanding, and it is miles apart from where Harris appears to be.
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What about the pernicious belief in the role of God in this entitlement to high office? Trump certainly believes that God has put him in the office of the President; he’s spoken of it often enough. He also believes he’s the best person in the world whether he’s referring to his physical condition or mental capacity.
The No Kings protests are an acknowledgment of his delusion and are an attempt to disabuse him of his crazy belief.
In the UK, of course, we have the medieval belief that kings and queens have a divine right to rule and, while their power has been curbed, it’s not insignificant. They’re protected, they’re excused and they never face the consequences of their actions.
Most illuminating. Thank you. This is why in the UK the establishment was frightened by Jeremy Corbyn, and will make life difficult for Zack Polanski if he looks like gaining more influence.
I think it might be time to get out the old inverted triangle of leadership, where the people are at the top, and the leader is at the bottom.
The problem with so called leaders is that the majority of them have colossal egos, and are surrounded by people who tell them how wonderful they are.
I would have loved to have seen a woman of colour as President of the USA, just as I’m pleased to see a woman of colour as leader of a British political party.
But unfortunately neither of them are great leaders.
And that is exactly the pitch that Farridge and his ilk make, however obviously based on complete fabrications, and presenting the wrong “solutions”. Where’s the genuine reluctant servant??
Yes, like Obama, well meaning but totally internal to neoliberal ideology a big corporate finance. Having risen up the ranks despite being black, she needs to develop a more radical approach like AOC and Bernie Sanders.
I’m reminded of a certain David Cameron who, when asked why he wanted to be Prime Minister, said “I think I’d be rather good at it”. Enough said.
Politicians are of course rather like Olympian or potential Olympian athletes.
In the same way that some athletes career peaked at the ‘wrong’ time so they never competed in an Olympic Games many Politicians dont/did make Party Leader/President/PM/Whatever because they were in the right place at the right time.
An obvious example might be Andy Burnham who cant stand as leader of The Labour Party if Starmer is suddenly deposed as he isnt an MP
I could not believe what she said? She’s talking as if she has won it already. Hearing a woman speak like this – and I have read about her – proves to me that women alone will not save the world, especially those women afflicted with pleonexia.
Harris thinks does she that Trump will destroy himself? And she’ll be relying on the same people who fund Trump? Simple eh? Hmmm………..way to go Kamala.
The other female pleonexic is Nancy Pelosi and her two male henchmen who seem to decide whom Democratic electors in the U.S. have the opportunity to vote for. Watching Michael Moores ‘Fareneit 11/9’ and how seemingly Pelosi made sure it was Mrs Clinton who went forward as the president elect and not Bernie Sanders against Trump’s first run convinced me a long time ago that extreme wealth should not be allowed near politics and that the sense of entitlement is gender neutral.
Didn’t Hillary R Clinton say, in answer to the question why she should be president, “because it is my turn”.
Seems Kamala Harris is of the same mindset. No thank you.
I am sick and tired of listening to the very many of the political class bang on about their personal sacrifices in pursuit of public “service” because it is a total lie. For the last 30 years or so we have had, in effect, a professional political class whereby any element of professed public “service” is a necessary precursor to personal advancement. The members of this professionalised political class operate an effective closed shop (Jonathan Cole’s excellent novel “The Closed Circle” was based around it) where only those on the inside are allowed to play. Many went to the same schools or universities, they mingle in the same circles (e.g. the invitees to the famed Spectator summer garden party) and they talk in the same coded language. Outsiders, however, are not tolerated. Infiltrators have to be removed.
Blair, Brown, Cameron (and Osborne), the Millibands and the mendacious Gove are just some of the exemplars of this entitled political closed shop. The same is true of the political media sub-strata and it is unsurprising that many of them pass frequently between the two. Undoubtedly the most egregious recent example of this is Boris Johnson. Any notion of public “service” is a sham – no one would vote for them if they simply admitted that all they wanted was to occupy high office because they believe it is their entitlement.
True public service involves sacrifice and dedication, not entitlement and advancement. I saw this illustrated recently in the excellent BBC “Saving lives at sea” which had one rescue where one of the featured crew members was an ambulance driving paramedic and then, away from work, served as a crew member on a lifeboat, risking his life for no other reward than the satisfaction of having saved a total stranger for drowning at sea. To me that is true public service.
So please can we all end the fantasy that today’s politicians seek power out of a sense of public duty. It is, at best, a total fiction. It’s all about them, and never about us.
Nothing to add to this superb post, except my thanks – and to note that Ms Harris’s remarks are all the more tone-deaf because she gained the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2024 without having to stand against any other candidates.
I really shouldn’t upset people twice in one day, but as a perfect UK example of what you are challenging, see Polly Toynbee, who is always rolled out when the Labour establishment need help, writing this almost unbelievable drivel about why Starmer is the PM of choice leading Labour, the party of choice to stop Farage in 2029. She even quotes the Caerphilly result in justification for her choice.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/28/keir-starmer-britain-unpopular-prime-minister-reform
There ought to be an award for this sort of incredible inventive writing.
I read her very rarely these days.
I should add, she ceased calling me a long time ago.
‘I have lived my entire career as a life of service, and it’s in my bones.’ OK, that’s fine. There must be plenty of food programmes, projects to reduce the impact of poverty on children, and campaigns to defend workers from unscrupulous employers etc and etc needing some support. Harris can get stuck in, deploying her knowledge of how the political system works – and having sufficient wealth not to need to be salaried. So she can continue her life of service easily and effectively than most of us can.