Important Points on Kamala Harris CNN Interview

Mrs. Harris, Mr. Walz, and CNN

  

By Reid J. Epstein

Reid J. Epstein covers Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. He reported from Washington.

The main reason CNN’s interview with Vice President Kamala Harris turned out to be remarkable was that it was the first one she had done since President Biden bowed out and tapped her as his successor.

Seated alongside her running mate, the quietly supportive Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris parried questions from Dana Bash on Thursday without causing herself political harm or providing herself a significant boost.

She was methodical and risk-averse in the 27-minute interview, performing like a top seed in the early rounds of the U.S. Open tennis tournament trying to hold serve, survive and advance to the next round — in this case, her Sept. 10 debate with former President Donald J. Trump.

Here are seven takeaways from the interview:

She hugged Biden’s policy legacy …

The Biden administration’s economic record? Terrific. The president’s stance toward Israel and Gaza? Hers is the same. His position on the border? She shares it, and would sign the bill his team helped negotiate. Fracking in Pennsylvania? Mr. Biden is for it, and so is she. 

As it turns out, Ms. Harris is a better salesperson for Mr. Biden’s accomplishments and defender of his record than he ever was. Perhaps that’s little surprise, given the president’s diminished political skills and trouble speaking coherently in recent years.

But if there were any questions about whether Ms. Harris would put any daylight between herself and the Biden legacy, she provided a definitive answer on Thursday night.

She will not.

… but wants to turn the page on him as well as Trump.

What Ms. Harris did do was offer herself up as a continuation of Mr. Biden’s leadership even as she distanced herself from him.

Asked by Ms. Bash if she had any regrets about defending Mr. Biden’s fitness for office and ability to serve a second term, Ms. Harris said she did not and praised the president.

Then, in the next breath, she deftly put both him and Mr. Trump in the rearview mirror.

“I am so proud to have served as vice president to Joe Biden,” she said. “I’m so proud to be running with Tim Walz for president of the United States and to bring America what I believe the American people deserve, which is a new way forward, and turn the page on the last decade of what I believe has been contrary to where the spirit of our country really lies.” 

Mr. Biden, of course, has been either president, vice president or a leading candidate for president for most of the last 15 years. 

“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” Ms. Harris said.Credit...CNN

She’s hunting for Republican votes.

Since her rise, Ms. Harris has moved carefully toward the political center. She abandoned a host of left-wing positions from her 2020 presidential campaign and showcased never-Trump Republicans at the Democratic convention last week.

On Thursday, she suggested she would appoint a Republican to her cabinet, a symbolic move to show that she would govern in a bipartisan manner.

“It would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my cabinet who was a Republican,” she said. 

It was once common for presidents to give the other party at least one cabinet post. President Barack Obama named Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois, a Republican, as his transportation secretary. President George W. Bush put Norman Y. Mineta, a Democrat, in the same role.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump did not appoint any members of the other party to their cabinets.

Harris would prefer not to discuss her race and gender.

Mr. Trump set off a blitz of negative headlines when he falsely suggested that Ms. Harris had identified as Black only later in life, and for political gain. It was an absurd assertion, and the vice president has sought to cut off oxygen to it.

“Same old, tired playbook,” she said when Ms. Bash asked her about the claim. “Next question, please.”

Asked if she had anything to add, Ms. Harris replied: “That’s it.”

Even after a softball question about a viral New York Times photo of her niece watching her speak at the Democratic convention, Ms. Harris refused to lean into the prospect of becoming the first Black woman elected as president.

“I am running because I believe that I am the best person to do this job at this moment for all Americans, regardless of race and gender,” she said, offering a clinical description of the photograph instead of revealing any emotions she felt viewing it. 

“I did see that photograph,” she went on. “And I was deeply touched by it. And, you’re right, she’s — it’s the back of her head, and her two little braids, and — and then I’m in the front of the photograph, obviously speaking. It’s very humbling.”

She still struggles to be punchy off the cuff.

Ms. Harris’s speeches are filled with simple, declarative sentences.

But Thursday’s interview was a reminder that unscripted, she can sometimes deliver discursive answers that ramble and zigzag.

Discussing her feelings when Mr. Biden told her he was ending his campaign and endorsing her, Ms. Harris said she had not at first thought about how the momentous turn of events would affect her life and legacy.

“My first thought was about him, to be honest,” she said. “I think history is going to show a number of things about Joe Biden’s presidency. I think history is going to show that in so many ways it was transformative, be it on what we have accomplished around finally investing in America’s infrastructure, investing in new economies, in new industries, what we have done to bring our allies back together, and have confidence in who we are as America, and grow that alliance, what we have done to stand true to our principles, including the — one of the most important international rules and norms, which is the importance of sovereignty and territorial integrity.” 

Simple and declarative it was not.

 

In a setting arranged by the Harris campaign to appear friendly — just three people sitting together at a neighborhood coffee shop in Savannah — it was going to be difficult for Ms. Bash to extract much news out of the vice president.

Still, the veteran journalist had a good night. Conducting one of the most prominent interviews of her career, she ticked through the biggest questions looming over Ms. Harris’s young candidacy, including what specific plans, exactly, she would pursue and why she hadn’t carried out some of her proposals while serving as vice president.

When Ms. Harris dodged an opening question about what her “Day 1” plans were, Ms. Bash asked it again. When there still wasn’t a clear answer, she asked Mr. Walz. He did not really answer it, either. At some point, any inquisitor must move on, and Ms. Bash did.

Republican critics of Ms. Harris may have wished for a harsher grilling — or for more direct questions about how she felt about Mr. Biden’s aptitude and acuity — but Ms. Bash pressed the vice president when necessary.

She also forced Mr. Walz to concede he had misspoken about the extent of his military service: “My grammar’s not always correct,” he said. 

Tim Walz is good at sitting and smiling.

At their joint rallies, Mr. Walz has played the role of excited cheerleader, offering a jubilant double-armed wave to crowds in support of Ms. Harris.

But in a joint interview setting, his role was more serene. He mostly sat there, silent, waiting for Ms. Bash to ask him to say something. At one point during the interview’s first segment, he went a full eight minutes without speaking.

Ms. Bash knew that the important person to hear from was Ms. Harris, and Mr. Walz probably did, too.

Michael M. Grynbaum contributed reporting from New York.