Why Danielle Allen Should Be the Democratic Nominee for Vice President of the United States of America
In the midst of the national discussions regarding when our cities will be able to reopen, forty-six of the fifty having had some form of stay-at-home or shelter-in-place order, Danielle Allen wrote another opinion piece for The Washington Post. The first sentence of the piece reveals the kind of thinker and citizen she is: “The president is right.” The April 24th essay, titled “The bold, necessary steps Trump should take now,” was Allen’s seventh such column since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11th. In it she outlines specific measures that should be in place to ensure the pervasive testing that we will need in order to open back up safely. In an earlier essay, Allen christened the approach TTSI, “testing, tracking and supported isolation.” Not only was the April 24th essay a measured and well-argued exploration of the facts at hand, but it was also an exercise in civics, a demonstration of how to adapt the best ideas of others, even if several might think them the ramblings of a fool, and bring them to bear, along with one’s own, for a common, collective good. In the case of COVID-19, the common good is the health and welfare of a nation of three hundred million people.
Photo Credit: Jim Harrison, Harvard Magazine
Over the past few months and in the years leading up to them, Danielle Allen’s consistent demonstration of this concern for the common good has earned her the right to be in the conversation about who should be Joe Biden’s running mate for the November 2020 presidential election. Vice President Biden has already declared that his running mate will be a woman. Even if this were not the case, Professor Allen is better prepared than all of the alternatives, male, female, or otherwise. She would bring vast knowledge, a learner’s disposition, and substance over style to the office. Sam Walker, author of The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership, recently wrote that “most executives…were quiet, reserved and self-effacing.” Allen’s scholarly stature and even disposition would balance Biden’s billing as a lifelong politician. As Walker puts it, “in moments of radical uncertainty, nobody cares about your God-given eloquence and magnetism.” The country is in a moment of radical uncertainty. We probably have been for some time, but COVID-19 exposed many of our most persistent fault lines: the economic divide, the technological divide, and the regional divide that fueled the breakdown in communication between state and federal governments.
Although her work has been primarily as a scholar of political philosophy, Allen has already proven that she can be an excellent advisor to the president, the role that Biden himself played during Obama’s presidency. A strong argument could be made that Allen could better serve Biden as a cabinet appointee. With her book Education and Equality, it is certainly clear that her policy approach would be fitting for a Secretary of Education, or Health and Human Services. From the policy positions that she outlines in her book, such as implementation of curricula like the University of Chicago Laboratory School, one can imagine better approaches to K12 education than “No Child Left Behind” or the “Every Student Succeeds Act.” Confining Allen to education, however, would be a mistake.
“But Allen’s approach to COVID-19 has elevated her to a level that merits consideration alongside the highest office, as Vice President. Her essays are verification of a nimble political philosopher, someone for whom civics and the American constitution are every present, missional realities. She calls attention to civil liberties while pressing for measures that “would establish the United States as the world leader on virus response.””
Allen is, alternatively, fitting for a role like Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, or Homeland Security. Her personal experience with the twenty-first century, Jim-Crow world of American prisons is painfully told in her book Cuz, about her cousin Michael’s experiences in and out of prisons and how he succumbed to the violence that surrounded him. The shocking juxtaposition should not be lost on the reader: A Harvard-educated, distinguished professor at Harvard, whose own father was a pedigreed political science professor, understands the familial entanglements that knot up all of the American lineage. One thinks of J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, which shows that our native contradictions are not about race alone. America is a patchwork, or as Obama put it in 2004, “We’re not red states and blue states; we’re all Americans, standing up together for the red, white, and blue.” Allen’s understanding of this tapestry and her commitment to the optimistic, futuristic vision of America would render her indispensable in any of these roles.
But Allen’s approach to COVID-19 has elevated her to a level that merits consideration alongside the highest office, as Vice President. Her essays are verification of a nimble political philosopher, someone for whom civics and the American constitution are every present, missional realities. She calls attention to civil liberties while pressing for measures that “would establish the United States as the world leader on virus response.”
I do not know if Allen is a Democrat. Although she was born inside the Beltway, I do not know whether she has kept close ties to Washington, DC, or its politics. Her highest office was serving as Dean of the Division of Humanities at the University of Chicago. She is a MacArthur Genius. She definitely seems more of the “captain class” that Walker describes, and perhaps this is a good thing.
Danielle Allen’s breadth of knowledge and experiences tell us that she can handle the role of Vice President. In her the country would have one of its best-equipped persons in that role.