The Biden administration is facing rising inflation, a domestic agenda whose success is still in question, a global pandemic that has not receded, and a damaging Democratic loss in the Virginia governor’s race that has some in the party questioning whether the White House is taking the right cues from American voters.
There is also the issue of lagging approval ratings for both President Biden and Ms. Harris: a recent USA Today-Suffolk University poll found that 28 percent of voters approved of the job the vice president is doing.
Symone Sanders, Ms. Harris’s press secretary and senior adviser, told reporters en route to Paris that dismal new polling reflected “a snapshot in time,” and that Ms. Harris was focused on other matters, including a social spending deal.
Allies of the administration treaded gingerly when asked how Ms. Harris’s performance abroad could change her own political fortunes.
Former Senator Chris J. Dodd of Connecticut, a member of the Biden campaign’s vice-presidential search committee and a confidant of the president, praised the job she had done in Paris, and said the vice president’s political future could include being a part of a longer list of Democratic candidates should the Biden presidency be limited to one term.
“I’m hoping the president runs for re-election,” Mr. Dodd said, “but for whatever reason that might not be the case, it’s hard to believe there would be a short list without Kamala’s name on it. She’s the vice president of the United States.”