Lucas: A trip to space may be just the thing for VP Kamala Harris – Boston Herald

Vice President Kamala Harris should have boldly rocketed into space with Captain Kirk.

That would have shut her critics up. It also would have helped turn her sagging image around.

And if a 90-year-old actor can make the flight, so could a 56-year-old vice president. Maybe even a 78-year-old president, although some critics might argue that he is already lost in space.

Upon landing in the West Texas desert, instead of the West Wing of the White House after her historic flight Wednesday aboard Jeff Bezos Blue Origin rocket Harris could have talked about space with real high school students.

After all, she would have been the first vice president let alone the first female vice president to have rocketed into space. Upon disembarking in her snazzy space suit, she could have said to the press, America is back, baby, and so am I.

And it would have been totally fitting because Harris, in addition to her other duties, like being President Bidens border czar, also heads Bidens National Space Council.

The Space Council is designed to help shape national space and security strategies. But while the Bezos space rocket lifted off in Texas, Harris was in Washington.

Such a flight with Harris aboard would have given Harris the opportunity to combine those two responsibilities.

Sitting in the space capsule along with Captain Kirk 90-year-old Star Trek actor William Shatner Harris on the way up would have gotten a panoramic view of the open Mexican border where hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are crossing.

That surely would have given Harris more insight into a solution to the border crisis. Space gives a person perspective. Looking down on the continent from higher up, you cannot see any borders. That is because there are none. Ergo, problem solved.

No borders, no problems.

Nobody knows if Biden will seek a second term. Nobody knows if he will even be around.

And nobody knows if he would have sanctioned such a flight for Harris had anyone even told him about it. Joe, Im going, she would have said, and thats all there is to it. But she did not go.

However, if she had a space flight under her belt, Harris could possibly have been a formidable candidate for president in 2024, campaigning as the sole candidate who had been in space.

People give you space once youve been to space.

Everyone knows how important space will be when World War III comes around, and people will be looking for a candidate with space credentials.

Meanwhile, of course, other presidential candidates would have been begging Bezos and Elon Musk, Bezos space competitor, to get on their own commercial space flights so they would not be outdone on the campaign trail.

Then, during the presidential debates they could not only argue over who flew the highest, the longest and broke the most sound barriers, but who flew the cheapest.

Instead of all the glory of a successful rocket flight into space, Harris ended up getting mocked for talking to a bunch of rented kids about craters on the moon. Craters on the moon? How about the crater in the White House?

The event was her appearance, two days before the Blue Origin rocket launch, in a NASA video talking about space travel to hired teenage actors in observance of World Space Week.

In a cringeworthy performance, Harris talked to the teenagers, all of whom were paid actors, about her passion for science, exploring the unknown and how excited she was about the Space Council.

Youre going to literally see the craters on the moon with your own eyes, Im telling you. Its going to be unbelievable, Harris said.

Had Harris waited a day or so she could have had Shatner talk to the students. While he did not see craters on the moon, Shatner was moved by the profound experience of his space trip.

Shatner said, Im so filled with emotion about what just happened. I just hope I never recover from this. Its so much larger than me and life. It has to do with the enormity and the quickness and the suddenness of life and death.

Everybody in the world needs to do this. It was so moving.

That was real life. Harris performance was an act. It was produced by a Canadian company appropriately called Sinking Ship Entertainment.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

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Lucas: A trip to space may be just the thing for VP Kamala Harris - Boston Herald