“What can be, unburdened by what has been” is a phrase Kamala Harris uses so often there are minutes-long supercuts available to watch on YouTube. It even has its own Wikipedia page. In other speeches, Harris has also expressed a belief in “the significance of the passage of time” and a desire to “honor the women who made history throughout history”.
Since becoming the presumptive nominee, Harris has invigorated the Democratic party. It’s not only that she’s a much younger candidate than Biden; she also has a stump speech style that embraces metaphor and a new age vernacular not often heard in national politics. The meme accounts love to quote it. It’s even led some to draw comparisons with Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s portrayal of Selina Meyer, the frothy politician in Veep. (In one episode, Meyer stumbles through a speech saying: “We are the United States of America because we are united … and we are states.”)
Although she has proven herself to be one of the most detail-oriented and precise speakers in the Democratic party, Harris also indulges in certain looser Kamalaisms – for example, her now famous anecdote about falling out of a coconut tree and “existing in the context of all in which you live” – which garner (satirical or otherwise) appreciation from supporters and jeering from her detractors. But what are the origins of Harris’s unique speaking style?
Gevin Reynolds, a former Harris speechwriter, says that a few of her most celebrated phrases (such as the aforementioned coconut tree and assertion that she’s the “first but not the last” female vice-president) come from her mother, the late biomedical scientist Shyamala Gopalan Harris.
“While her mother has passed away, the vice-president has kept her memory alive through sharing her words of wisdom to the world,” Reynolds said. “Every speaker has their favorite ‘fallback’ quotes. Most times, they’re corny and cliche. But the vice-president repeats her iconic phrases because they speak powerfully on so many occasions, not to mention they are so uniquely her.”
Reynolds said that he “can’t take credit” for any of Harris’s greatest hits. “I imagine she has used many of them throughout her long career in public service, going back to her California days,” he said. “However, I got the chance to hear the kind of incisive questions she asks and comments she makes. She approaches every set of remarks like a prosecutor, attempting to assemble the facts of a case into a clear and compelling narrative.”
Beth Blum, an associate professor of humanities at Harvard University who writes on the history of wellness literature, says Harris’s ethos – especially the “unburdened by what has been” quote – borrows from Eckhart Tolle’s 1997 bestseller, The Power of Now, an Oprah-approved tome that’s sold millions of copies worldwide.
“This self-help doctrine – which actually dates back to antiquity – grows out of an effort to empower individuals to not be determined by their circumstances,” Blum said. “This phrase is just vaguely affirmative enough to reassure multiple demographics.”
If Harris channels self-help rhetoric, she’s not alone among presidential candidates. Donald Trump’s parents brought him to Norman Vincent Peale’s church for Sunday sermons, and the former president maintains an affinity for The Power of Positive Thinking author’s favorite cliches. Peale told readers to “never think of yourself as failing”, something Trump took and ran with.
Marianne Williamson became Oprah’s “spiritual adviser” through her long career as a new age guru; Robert F Kennedy Jr counts Tony Robbins as a close friend and asked the coach to be his running mate. “Harris’s connections to self-help are subtler than these other candidates, and yet she finds herself the target of more memes aimed at exposing her reliance on such self-help rhetoric,” Blum said. “At this point, self-help rhetoric and American politics are fatefully entwined.”
As the first Black and south Asian vice-president, Harris is facing a wave of racist and sexist online attacks, with some on the right engaging in bad-faith teasing of her speaking style. But after weeks of watching Joe Biden stumble at podiums, it’s been enlivening for supporters to see Harris speak passionately, and without a teleprompter, at her first few events as a candidate.
Blum says Harris’s endless repetition of the “what can be, unburdened by what has been” line is reflective of her own enthusiasm: “It hints at the performative demands of her position. One marvels at her ability to utter this phrase with such verve and conviction time and time again, as if she is inventing it for the first time.” Truly, she is unburdened by what has been.
