In her memoir, Harris describes delivering a speech in Selma, Ala., in March 2024 that commemorated the heroic efforts of civil rights activists who faced down brutal state-sanctioned violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. The speech went viral, however, because it addressed the Palestinian-Israel conflict. Although it “had been vetted and approved by the White House and National Security Council,” the West Wing was unhappy once it gained widespread attention. Harris writes that she “was castigated for, apparently, delivering it too well. Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed.” She adds, “None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well” and that “my visible success would serve as a testament to his good judgement in choosing me.” Biden’s staff, however, “didn’t get it.”