Kamala Harris lands second Vogue cover: ‘The candidate for our times’

Kamala Harris has landed her second US Vogue cover on Friday with a photograph by Annie Leibovitz that reads: “The candidate for our times.”

“Only rarely are individuals summoned for acts of national rescue, but in July, Vice President Kamala Harris received one of those calls,” the glossy magazine, which has previously endorsed the candidate, said on X. “With President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection campaign, the world looked to Harris with hopes and doubts.”

But the accompanying 8,000-word profile elicited little new about Harris’s policy positions if she is elected in November.

“One of my first calls – outside of family – will be to the team that is working with me on our plan to lower costs for the American people,” she told the magazine.

“It’s not just about publishing something in a respected journal. It’s not about a speech. It’s literally about, How does this hit the streets? How do people actually feel the work in a way that benefits them?”

On the widening war in the Middle East, Harris said that while she could not anticipate the future, she would focus on creating “‘incentives’ for de-escalation and a ‘pathway’ for stability” and spoke of “Israel’s right to defend itself” and Palestinians’ “right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination”.

“There’s been a language and a conversation around what’s been happening, particularly around Israel and Gaza, that suggests that this is binary. It’s not,” she said, adding: “You’re not either for this one or for that one.

“A lot of the work that needs to be done,” Harris continued, “is a function of the circumstances at the moment. I can’t anticipate what the circumstances will be four months from now.”

The publication spoke to the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was deeply involved in the effort to oust Biden from the ticket after the president’s disastrous debate performance with Donald Trump in June.

Pelosi said: “We had wanted – we thought that there would be – an open convention” and Harris had recognized the conflicts within the Democratic party.

“It was easy for people to come to her because they knew she didn’t have bad feelings toward them,” Pelosi explained. “And then she – boom! – one, two, three, wrapped it all up. It was a beautiful thing.”

The cover photo is likely to stir up less drama than a previous Vogue portrait three years ago that provoked a backlash for what critics deemed a lack respect for the first person of Black and south Asian descent sworn in as vice-president after she was photographed in sneakers.

“Vogue robbed Harris of her roses,” wrote the Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan. “A bit of awe would have served the magazine well in its cover decisions. Nothing about the cover said, ‘Wow.’ And sometimes, that’s all Black women want, an admiring and celebratory ‘wow’ over what they have accomplished.”

Vogue later amended the online picture with a more flattering image.

“Obviously we have heard and understood the reaction to the print cover,” the editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, told the New York Times, “and I just want to reiterate that it was absolutely not our intention to, in any way, diminish the importance of the vice-president-elect’s incredible victory.”