Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration and Harris campaign. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren We all have that one thing we just have to do whenever we travel to a new place. Maybe your trip isn’t complete without trying a local cup of coffee or the regional cuisine. Perhaps you’re someone who must find the most scenic backdrop a city has to offer for your Instagram post. If you're like Eli, you're hitting the flea market hunting for antiques. For Vice President KAMALA HARRIS, it’s seeing a foreign country’s supreme court building. “Whenever I travel to a country for the first time, I try to visit the highest court in the land. They are monuments of a certain kind, built not just to house a courtroom but to send a message,” Harris wrote in her 2019 memoir, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey.” “In New Delhi, for example, the Supreme Court of India is designed to symbolize the balancing scales of justice. In Jerusalem, Israel’s iconic Supreme Court building combines straight lines — which represent the rigid nature of the law — with curved walls and glass that represent the fluid nature of justice,” Harris continued. “These are buildings that speak.” Upholding this practice became more difficult once Harris assumed the vice presidency, now traveling with a massive security detail, an entourage of staff and reporters in tow. She could no longer leisurely stroll by the building or pop into the visitor center on a whim. But she was determined. In 2021, as Harris aides began preparing for the vice president’s foreign travel, they discussed how they could keep Harris’ cherished tradition alive despite the security and logistical hurdles. The simplest solution, they decided, would be to drive by the buildings. So, her travel and advance team, along with her Secret Service detail, got to work on mapping out motorcade routes that would go by the courts — even if it meant a slightly longer drive time. On her first foreign trip as vice president to Guatemala, Harris’ motorcade, which typically moves at a breakneck speed, slowed down as it approached the towering concrete Palace of Justice near the center of Guatemala City. A few days later in Mexico City, her motorcade again slowed as it approached the corners of Pino Suarez and Carranza streets, allowing the vice president to get a good look at the rectangular art decó style Supreme Court. She drove by the Supreme Court in Singapore and passed by the Supreme Court of Thailand during a visit to Bangkok in 2023. Her office estimates that she’s driven past the highest court in about half of the countries she’s been to as vice president. “The motorcade moves so quickly. And I was like, ‘Why are we slowing down?,’” said one Harris official, recalling their first foreign trip with the vice president. “And then we realized, ‘Oh, there’s the Supreme Court.’” Although the supreme court drive-bys were rooted in a tradition that Harris started long before becoming vice president, they quickly came to play a larger role in her diplomacy as she sought to craft her own approach to leader-to-leader engagements, something that was relatively new to her. Former Harris aides said that at the start of her vice presidency, they often made an effort to pass the supreme court buildings shortly after arriving in a country, or on the way to the vice president’s first round of diplomatic talks, so that she could bring it up in meetings. The aides said that it gave Harris a natural conversation starter that foregrounded her experience as a prosecutor and helped communicate something about her and her values to leaders she was meeting for the first time. “It was one way of weaving her history into her job as VP,” said a former Harris aide. Visiting the courts spoke to the core of who Harris is — someone who often refers to late Supreme Court Justice THURGOOD MARSHALL as her “hero” and opted to put Lady Justice holding a set of scales on her challenge coin, other Harris aides said. “In a small way, it tells a story about her,” said a second former Harris aide, speaking of the foreign court visits. But Harris’ tradition could soon come to an end. If elected president, aides say her larger security footprint would make it much more challenging to tinker with her motorcade route. MESSAGE US — Are you ANDREW PLAGUE, senior associate staff secretary? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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