After 37 days of avoiding the press like a plague, VP Kamala Harris sat down with CNN’s Dana Bash to answer a series of softball questions in an interview that failed to shed light on the Democrat Party platform for this coming election. With her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, at her side, the duo was granted a Fourth Estate fig leaf to fend off accusations of obfuscation and avoidance. And yet, some things became perfectly clear despite the opaque offering.
A Free Pass for Harris
Notably absent from the interview were questions that concerned her record in office as the vice president. In fact, Ms. Bash offered Harris a proverbial get-out-of-jail-free card on her policy flip flops, asking:
"Generally speaking, how should voters look at some of the changes that you've made? … Is it because you have more experience now, and you've learned more about the information? Is it because you were running for president in a Democratic primary? And should they feel comfortable and confident that what you're saying now is going to be your policy moving forward?"
To date, VP Harris has flipped positions on criminalizing illegal border crossings, a ban on fracking, a ban on the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035, and eliminating private health insurance. In response to the CNN lifeline, she said, "Dana, I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed." And there you have it: While her policy positions have done a complete 180, her “values” remain constant. It was a refrain echoed repeatedly and was happily accepted by Dana Bash as plausible.
Facts First
While fact-checking an interviewee in real-time is a rarity in modern political journalism (unless it is being done by a panel watching a broadcast), Ms. Bash let a number of whoppers slip through the net during the 27-minute escapade.
While touting the success of the Biden/Harris American Rescue Plan (ARP), the VP presented a carefully selected factoid that has gone largely unchallenged by the Fourth Estate. She said, “When we do what we did in the first year of being in office to extend the child tax credit so that we cut child poverty in America by over 50%.” On the surface, that sounds like an impressive accomplishment, but at best, it is misleading and, at worst, obfuscatory.
The cut in childhood poverty was according to a single metric, and that rightly saw a decrease from 9.7% to 5.2% in 2021 (a drop of nearly 50%). However, by 2022, that figure had increased to 12.4% - worse than it was before the ARP. That metric, the Supplemental Poverty Measure, has always been an unwieldy animal that simply measures how much money (including tax credits and the like) a family has on hand. By doling out a chunk of cash, a government can reduce that figure overnight. Once the dollars have been spent, however, the figure goes straight back up.
The Biden Question
The most significant question that Kamala Harris will have to answer prior to the November election concerns President Biden’s fitness for office and his cognitive decline, specifically: What did she know, and when did she know it? Bash asked, “Vice President Harris, you were a very staunch defender of President Biden’s capacity to serve another four years right after the debate. You insisted that President Biden is extraordinarily strong, given where we are now, do you have any regrets about what you told the American people?”
Her response was consummate political speak but far from enlightening, saying:
“No, not at all. Not at all. I have served with President Biden for almost four years now. And I’ll tell you, it’s one of the greatest honors of my career, truly. He cares so deeply about the American people. He is so smart and — and loyal to the American people. And I have spent hours upon hours with him, be it in the Oval Office or the Situation Room. He has the intelligence, the commitment, and the judgment and disposition that I think the American people rightly deserve in their president.”
If this were a true reflection of reality, why then did she not defend the president’s right to run again in this election cycle? And perhaps more poignantly, why did she not publicly and vociferously defend him from the palace coup that saw him so ignominiously removed from the ballot?
Not Forgetting Walz
As Liberty Nation News’ Senior Political Analyst Tim Donner posed before the interview: “Does she need an interpreter for her word salads? Does she need someone to explain policies that she is unable to explain? Is this just a naked attempt to reduce the number of direct questions she will be required to answer?” The presence of her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, is not an outlier event. Indeed, side-by-side interviews have taken place with other candidates, including former President Donald Trump, who has taken part in similar setups with both former VP Mike Pence and current running mate JD Vance. But a similarity is not a salve.
Trump has and continues to engage in one-to-one interviews, whether that is with friendly or oppositional news networks, popular YouTubers, social media CEOs, or, indeed, it seems, anyone with a sizeable audience. While Ms. Harris has broken her 39-day streak of avoiding the press, doing so with Walz as a crutch does not add to her reputation as a maverick politico.
And what of Mr. Walz? The big question for the VP hopeful was regarding his statements on carrying “weapons in war.” Bash pointed out that a campaign official had said he had “misspoke.” “Did you?” she asked. He responded:
“I speak like they do. I speak candidly. I wear my emotions on my sleeves, and I speak especially passionately about our children being shot in schools and around guns.”
“We were talking about, in these cases, this was after school shooting, the ideas of carrying these weapons of war, and my wife, the English teacher, told me my grammar is not always correct,” he added.
When pressed by Bash on other issues where critics have accused him of being blasé with the truth, he insisted that “I certainly own my mistakes when I make them,” without actually acknowledging that he had made any.
Unburdened By What Has Been
For those viewers anticipating a rash of policy proposals, disappointment was on the menu. A similar fare was served to those who had hoped for a robust defense of her partnership in the White House with Joe Biden. Indeed, Kamala Harris appears to be positioning herself as a neophyte candidate who is only tangentially connected to the current administration and ready to adopt or drop platforms at whim. While this interview with Dana Bash will allow the VP’s campaign team to declare that she is not avoiding media scrutiny, such scrutiny was missing from the whole episode.
Thomas Aquinas wrote, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” And that appears to hold true for Harris’ first – and possibly only – interview before the upcoming presidential debate. She made no significant gaffes and presented as capable and in charge of her narrative. But it was perhaps more a political Rorschach test than an exposé of a potential future president.
The people saw what they wanted to see and will rate her efforts according to that rubric. And that may have been the point all along.
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