By Bret Stephens / The New York Times
What does Kamala Harris think the United States should do about the Houthis, whose assaults on commercial shipping threaten global trade, and whose attacks on Israel risk a much wider Mideast war? If an interviewer were to ask the vice president about them, would she be able to give a coherent and compelling answer?
It’s not an unfair or unprecedented question. As a presidential candidate, George W. Bush was quizzed on the names of the leaders of Taiwan, India, Pakistan and Chechnya. He got one right (Taiwan’s Lee Teng-hui) but drew blanks on the rest. It fueled criticism, as The New York Times’ Frank Bruni reported in 1999, that “he is not knowledgeable enough about foreign policy to lead the nation.”
A few more questions for Harris: If, as president, she had intelligence that Iran was on the cusp of assembling a nuclear weapon, would she use force to stop it? Are there limits to American support for Ukraine, and what are they? Would she push for the creation of a Palestinian state if Hamas remained a potent political force within it? Are there any regulations she’d like to get rid of in her initiative to build 3 million new homes in the next four years? What role, if any, does she see for nuclear power in her energy and climate plans? If there were another pandemic similar to covid-19, what might her administration do differently?
It may be that Harris has thoughtful answers to these sorts of questions. If so, she isn’t letting on. She did well in the debate with Donald Trump, showing poise and intelligence against a buffoonish opponent. But her answers in two sit-down interviews, first with CNN’s Dana Bash and then with Brian Taff of 6ABC in Philadelphia, were lighter than air. Asked what she’d do to bring down prices, she talked at length about growing up middle-class among people who were proud of their lawns before pivoting to vague plans to support small business and create more housing.
Lovely. Now how about interest-rate policy, federal spending and the resilience of our supply chains?
All this helps explain my unease with the thought of voting for Harris; an unease I never felt, despite policy differences, when Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were on the ballot against Trump. If Harris can answer the sorts of questions I posed above, she should be quick to do so, if only to dispel a widespread perception of unseriousness. If she can’t, then what was she doing over nearly eight years as a senator and vice president?
It’s not the only thing that makes a voter like me uneasy.
Biden has said we’re living through a “decisive decade” for the future of the free world, and he’s right. Does Harris have an overriding strategic concept for how to steer through it, or the instincts to respond to fast-moving crises?
Illiberal populism has taken root in response to well-founded perceptions of elite incompetence, highhandedness and self-dealing. Does Harris have anything to offer disaffected voters, or does she merely embody the elitist perspective that they despise?
When Harris says “my values have not changed” in the face of questions about her shifting positions on fracking, a border wall and health care for immigrants without legal status, does it suggest any values beyond political expediency?
But: Trump.
That’s the all-purpose response for many voters to any doubts about Harris’ qualifications. It makes November’s choice easy for anyone sincerely convinced that the former president poses an existential threat to the perpetuation of our political institutions. It also makes it easy for Never-Trumpers who hope that a decisive electoral rebuke of the former president might return the GOP to its pre-MAGA incarnation as the party of John McCain or Mitt Romney.
Yet Trump victory or no, the Republican Party isn’t likely to revert to its former ideological leanings. And the argument that Trump is our Benito Mussolini, scheming with ever-greater malevolence and cunning to end the Republic, is getting a little long in the tooth.
Trump may be much the worse sinner, but Democrats aren’t blameless when it comes to weaponizing the instruments of state power to interfere with the will of the voters. Otherwise, what does it mean to try to kick a candidate off a state ballot, or use a nakedly politicized prosecution to turn an opponent into a felon, or have powerful insiders anoint a presidential candidate without the benefit of a single primary vote?
For what my vote is worth — very little, considering I live in New York — I’d much rather cast a ballot for Harris than stay home. But votes need to be earned.
It should not be hard for Harris to demonstrate that she can give detailed answers to urgent policy questions. Or to express a sense, beyond a few canned phrases, of how she sees the American interest in a darkening world. Or to articulate a politics of genuine inclusion that reaches out to tens of millions of distrustful voters. Or to prove that she’s more than another factory-settings liberal Democrat whose greatest virtue, like her greatest fault, is that she won’t step too far from the conventional wisdom.
Seven weeks to go. Here’s hoping.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times, c.2024.
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