Kamala Harris says allowing 2024 Biden candidacy was 'recklessness'

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Kamala Harris believes it was reckless to allow former President Joe Biden to decide to seek re-election in 2024, but she felt she was the last person who could advise her 81-year-old boss not to run, according to excerpts from her new book released on Wednesday.

Biden, a Democrat, ended his re-election campaign on July 21, 2024, after a poor debate performance against Republican candidate Donald Trump that prompted aides and party officials to question publicly whether he could endure a full campaign or serve a second term.

"Of all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out. I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run," wrote former Vice President Harris in "107 Days," according to an excerpt published in The Atlantic magazine.

"'It’s Joe and (his wife) Jill’s decision.' We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness.

"The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision."

Harris, 60, became the Democratic candidate and had just 107 days to make her case to the American public. She lost to Trump, now 79, in the November election and has kept a low profile since then. She said in July she would not run for governor of California.

Biden's stunning withdrawal from the race was followed by questions about whether the White House withheld critical information about the president's mental acuity. Biden's closest aides dismissed those concerns, saying he was fully capable of making important decisions.

Representatives for Biden declined to comment for now on the book.

In her book, Harris denied there was a White House conspiracy to cover up Biden's age-related failings, which she described as becoming more pronounced as his presidential campaign heated up.

"On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best."

"But at 81, Joe got tired."

Biden was the oldest person to ever serve as U.S. president. Now 82, he has been diagnosed with an "aggressive form" of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.

Harris, a former U.S. senator from California, was Biden's vice president during his 2021-2025 term, the first woman as well as the first South Asian and Black person to serve in the position.

Harris also described the attacks she endured as vice president from right-wing critics and others and said she got little help from the White House in beating those back.

"They had a huge comms team; they had Karine Jean-Pierre briefing in the pressroom every day. But getting anything positive said about my work or any defense against untrue attacks was almost impossible," Harris wrote.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Steve Holland; Editing by Frances Kerry and Andrea Ricci)