On the weekend, The Guardian reported an interview through which Kamala Harris mentioned:

I’m not completed. … I’ve lived my whole profession as a lifetime of service, and it is in my bones.

Staggeringly, regardless of having misplaced the presidency in 2024, Harris remains to be framing the presidency as her inevitable reward for her public service credentials.

This intuition, greatest described as the assumption that prime workplace is a prize for the achieved, a rightful place for the initiated elite, is deeply embedded within the political tradition of the USA, and to a point the UK. What it reveals is a important side of how political elites conceive of energy. A variety of points appear price noting.

First, there’s a very apparent sense of entitlement in elite political circles. Within the case of Harris, her quote implies (and it appears clear that she believes) that her profession of “service” qualifies her for the highest job. She speaks as if the presidency awaits her due to her résumé, moderately than being a job she would settle for if she received a preferred mandate and accepted public accountability.

Saying so, Harris is just not alone on this framing:  it’s echoed throughout the elite spectrum. For instance, Donald Trump (regardless of ideological variations) additionally maintains the language of “I deserve to steer” and of elevation moderately than service. There’s a sample: energy is seen because the endpoint of a profession, moderately than the start of an obligation.

Second, entitlement on this sense is underpinned by a neoliberal mindset: the person elite, by advantage of credentials, networks, historical past, and positions beforehand held, claims a proper to ascend. The coverage content material they’ve to supply (if any) turns into secondary to the declare of entitlement. The presidency is the prize for the supposedly achieved moderately than the required device of structural transformation that the USA may require.

In Harris’ case, the argument is that she has served and due to this fact ought to lead. However the query have to be requested: who has she served, and to what finish? If the insurance policies she presents stay inside the confines of present neoliberal frameworks of markets, deregulation, and incrementalism, as is the usual providing of what is perhaps known as the Company Democrats, then the entitlement she believes she enjoys turns into a self-referential loop: the elite serves the elite after which positive aspects elite standing, after which it claims management because the reward with out ever disrupting the underlying energy relations which might be in lots of circumstances the reason for the malaise the US has confronted for thus lengthy.

Third, the political economic system of entitlement is corrosive. When these in elite circles imagine they’re owed energy, the hyperlink to democratic legitimacy is weakened. The danger is that governance turns into much less about altering the structural circumstances of inequality or about shifting the financial foundations of the state, extra concerning the rotation of elites. As an alternative of breaking the rule that international capital dictates, as a President who may deal with the wants of the USA ought to, the elite politician holding that function as a substitute turns into the de facto gatekeeper of continuity. Their entitled management merely reinforces the established order.

Fourth, we should always study the results of this for justice and democracy. One consequence is that the dispossessed stay observers of, and never individuals in, the political course of. When management is framed as a reward for service moderately than a accountability to the deprived, the voices of these with out credentials or networks are implicitly marginalised. The results of that’s seen in coverage stagnation. Entitled elites not often problem the financial mannequin that produces inequality; they restore confidence moderately than re-imagine buildings. So we get modest reforms moderately than transformation, and on account of that, institutional belief erodes. If folks imagine the sport of politics is “who has the fitting CV” moderately than “who solutions to us”, then cynicism grows and political engagement declines.

In that case, we should reject the notion that prime public workplace is a prize for the deserving, as Kamala Harris seems to view it. As an alternative, energy have to be seen as grounded in an acceptance of accountability to the various. Meaning reworking our conception of management:

• Leaders should emerge from function, and never from privilege. Leaders should present a willingness to disrupt moderately than protect when the established order clearly doesn’t work.
• The state should reclaim its function, not as facilitator of elite ambition however as guarantor of collective well-being. Perception in progressive tax reform, redistribution of wealth, and public funding within the widespread good should turn out to be the standards for management, and never simply standing.
• Democratic accountability have to be stronger: these whose careers counsel they “deserve” energy should show that that energy is not going to maintain the elite order however problem it.

Briefly, the elite entitlement tradition that claims “I’ve served, due to this fact I deserve to steer” have to be supplanted by a tradition that claims “I search management as a result of I settle for accountability for systemic change”. The presidency, or any excessive workplace, should not be the trophy for service however the device for transformation.

In that case, Kamala Harris (and the language she makes use of) presents a helpful lens on elite entitlement. It must be understood that when she says “I’m not completed”, the message is: “I’m owed this chance.” However democracy calls for a special message. It requires {that a} candidate say, “I’m prepared for the duty.” If progressive reform is to imply something, then we should shift the narrative of energy from reward to accountability. That shift issues as a result of the choice is the continuation of neoliberal governance wearing new faces, however with the identical previous logic.

In that case, we’d like a brand new technology of leaders who are usually not merely those that imagine they’re entitled however are those that can show that they perceive that energy is a accountability, and never a prize. And that’s the reason Zohran Mamdani is perhaps such a shock to the likes of Kamala Harris, as a result of that may appear to be his understanding, and it’s miles other than the place Harris seems to be.