If Harris is elected, it’s clear that she does not have the persuasive skills to move a reluctant Congress.
The after-actions on the Kamala Harris–Tim Walz interview with CNN’s Dana Bash range from “let’s move on” to “very bad.” No one — and I mean no one — who is not trying their best to lie to you is out there telling you that Kamala Harris crushed it.
Rich Lowry says, “The whole thing felt a little awkward, and they both seemed nervous and were unconvincing when briefly challenged on flip-flops or mis-statements, but it was fine and forgettable.”
Former Obama adviser David Axelrod said, “Yeah — I think she did what she needed to do,” which is campaign-operative-ese for “Sigh, well, it wasn’t a total disaster; she survived.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Kyle Smith probably summed it up best when he wrote, “We’re looking at an unprecedented string of 3 consecutive idiots becoming president.”
So the 22.3 minutes in the ring with Dana Bash didn’t exactly — ya know — go well for Kamala Harris or anyone’s evaluation of how competent she’d be in the Oval Office.
Take, for example, Harris’s attempt to answer the question of how she would approach Israel’s war against Hamas, and specifically, if she would do anything differently than President Joe Biden, such as withhold arms shipments to the IDF:
Harris’s position, such as it is, is essentially the breadth and depth of three talking points:
- Harris supports Israel’s right to defend itself
- But too many Palestinians have died
- So therefore, “We must get a deal done. This war must end.”
Unfortunately, those three talking points seem to be the extent of Harris’s knowledge of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Either that, or she’s entirely unable to articulate a more nuanced position. What if Hamas, as it has done to date, refuses to make a deal or give up the hostages? Does Israel have the right to pursue its stated war aim of destroying Hamas — even if that prolongs the war — in order to ensure its national security? What will Harris do if Iran or Lebanese Hezbollah escalate and attack Israel, or what if Israel deems it necessary to preemptively attack Hezbollah on a large scale to defend her people? Will Harris be with Israel in either of those eventualities? Of course, we got no details on any of that.
Instead, when Bash pressed Harris and queried “but no change in policy?” the woman who would be president of the United States shook her head with a confused and annoyed look and repeated, “No, we have to get a deal done. When you look at the significance of this to the [hostages’] families, to the people who are living in that region, a deal is not only the right thing to do to end this war, but will unlock so much of what must happen next.”
Got that? Kamala Harris says we must have a deal, because if we have a deal, we’ll have a deal, and that will give us the benefits of having a deal. So we must, therefore, have a deal.
A similar dreary dynamic was repeated in Bash’s attempt to discuss immigration, inflation, and Harris’s proposed economic policies.
So why do I say there is a silver lining here? Because if Kamala Harris is elected president, it’s clear to me that she does not have the rhetorical and persuasive skills, and she will not have the political capital, to move a reluctant Congress, even one narrowly controlled by her own party, to do hard, unpopular things or pass hard, unpopular legislation. This woman doesn’t have the capacity to do that.
There’s a common saying about American politics: Most presidents get one big thing done while in office. A very successful president might get two.
Ronald Reagan got the economy moving again and won the Cold War. Bill Clinton balanced the budget. Barack Obama passed his Obamacare law. Donald Trump passed his tax-cut package.
But Kamala Harris won’t be able to get Congress to pack the Supreme Court. Kamala Harris won’t be able to get Congress to pass an extremely liberal immigration law that legalizes DACA without imposing border security. Kamala Harris won’t be able to revive Joe Biden’s half-trillion-dollar student-loan forgiveness package and pass it into law. She won’t be able to neuter the First or Second Amendments through federal legislation. She won’t be able to pass a new unrealized-capital-gains tax or a wealth tax or extremely high marginal income-tax rates. She won’t be able to pass price controls or a $25,000 downpayment giveaway to first-time homebuyers.
I’m not saying that a Kamala Harris administration wouldn’t be able to cause all kinds of mischief via executive order; she will undoubtedly do her best to do her worst. But those executive orders would be reviewed by the courts and would be reversible by future administrations — just as Donald Trump’s were. What I am saying is that Harris will not be able to fundamentally change the character of our constitutional order.
She’ll be too weak, too disorganized, and too vapid to get anything done of consequence.
That might be inconvenient for the Trump campaign’s political messaging, which is simultaneously trying to argue that she’s a committed Communist with a cold-eyed plan to destroy our country, and that she’s a bumbling nincompoop.
But Kamala Harris is merely a bumbling nincompoop. That’s the silver lining for a very dark time. Take it or leave it.