Kamala Harris, the new Democratic vice-presidential nominee, certainly looks the part. Barack Obama once called her ‘the best-looking attorney general in the country’, though he later decided that was a sexist remark and apologised. She’s half-black, half-Indian and she has a charismatic Californian smile. If a director were casting for someone to play America’s first minority woman vice-president, he’d probably plump for an actress who looked like Harris.