Stripped of showbiz and teleprompted rallies, Kamala Harris is scrutinised at last
This won’t be the most memorable screen event. What will live in the memory, perhaps – certainly for Democratic party media managers – was how it looked.
The headline was that it happened at all.
It took Kamala Harris five weeks from the day she took the call from Joe Biden to finally sit down for an extended interview.
On one view – a common one – it’s an astonishing length of time for a public to be kept waiting for proper, independent, scrutiny of a candidate to be their president.
Up until now, we’ve had the party-packaged version rolled out through convention and teleprompted rallies.
The launch, laced with showbiz, has worked for them.
Support surging behind a pre-interviewed Ms Harris will weigh heavily in the calculations of Democratic campaign managers balancing their instinct for control with necessary exposure to media questioning.
The questions many had about Ms Harris were around her politics and how they had changed on a number of key election issues, like fracking and decriminalising illegal entry at the US border.
It feeds opposition lines of attack that, as a public servant, she lacks authenticity.
Her answer, repeated several times, was that her “values” hadn’t changed.
She will hope it flies in places like the must-win state of Pennsylvania, where fracking is a job creator and voters will ponder her new-found support for it.
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Harris has attempted to negotiate path to centre of political landscape
They’d be entitled to ask why, if consistency in her “values” hasn’t prevented change in her policy stance previously, why will they preclude a change in future?
It is one example of how Ms Harris has attempted to negotiate a path towards the centre of the political landscape.
In this US presidential contest, electability doesn’t lie in the progressive territory she trod as part of her effort to be the nominee in 2020.
Her recognition of the 2024 reality was clear in this interview, right down to her statement that she would entertain a Republican in her cabinet – a play for opposition voters feeling a distance from Donald Trump.
Little daylight between Biden and Harris
The interview didn’t show much daylight between Mr Biden and Ms Harris.
She anchored her economic credentials in the record of the current administration and welded herself to existing policy on the Middle East, rejecting suggestions she’d rethink arms shipments to Israel.
She did, however, acknowledge that continuity won’t wholly cut it when she spoke of a wish to “turn the page on the last decade of what I believe has been contrary to where the spirit of our country really lies”.
She is, at once, fighting on his record and fighting against it.
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A schoolboy error in best presentation
By the end of the election campaign, this won’t be the most memorable screen event – we’ve probably had that with the Trump/Biden debate.
What will live in the memory, perhaps – certainly for Democratic party media managers – was how it looked.
It was already strange Ms Harris brought Tim Walz along to her big interview as a “plus one”.
To then have her sat low down, seemingly tiny and towered over by her running mate, was a schoolboy error in best presentation.
It’s not like they didn’t have time to plan.
