The Democratic candidate for president is every bit as selfish and vacant as she seems.
I am discovering that one of the dangers of writing a newsletter for NR is being constantly sandbagged by events after the fact. The Carnival of Fools gets published on Tuesday mornings but goes to the copy-editors by early Monday afternoon at the latest. This means that the majority of the drafting is done on Sunday nights, and sometimes that span of a couple of days can just kill a man, especially when he’s attempting a kindness.
Because I keep trying to find some possible way — in the name of Christian charity, for pity’s sake at least — to give Kamala Harris some sort of break if I think she actually deserves it. (It’s a healthy mental exercise if nothing else.) And this majestically incompetent, mentally rudderless, graspingly needy clodpoll won’t even let me do it.
In the newsletter this morning, in response to those attacking the vice president for her non-response to Hurricane Helene’s devastation in western North Carolina, I made what I thought was an eminently sensible point: She is vice president, not president — it’s not her responsibility. There’s really nothing she can do and no role she has to play here:
I just don’t see there being much to hit her on about this. . . . In situations like these, it can be helpful for a president or candidate to visit, but primarily only helpful to them. It is done for self-serving reasons, as a photo op to signal solidarity. This is important for the practice of democratic politics, but it is equally as important to remember that it does not resemble an actual political argument. . . .
I can understand why Harris is being hit with the fallout to Hurricane Helene — that’s national politics, pure and simple, and North Carolina is a swing state. There are those who might even argue it’s political malpractice not to make hay out of this as a Republican. But I am not a politician or a political hack, and I have no need to make such calculations. I well remember how savagely George W. Bush was treated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by a media that still has never sufficiently apologized for its wild hysteria and transparent political bias. Forgive me if I choose not to further perpetuate that hypocrisy myself.
I wrote that on Sunday. Therefore, let yesterday and today’s developments stand as a sobering reminder to me going forward: Never bother trying to give Kamala Harris the benefit of the doubt again. You see, Hurricane Milton is within hours of making landfall on the coast of central Florida, currently at Category 4 strength and headed straight for the Tampa/St. Petersburg metro region — and Kamala Harris is angry that the governor won’t take her calls.
Yes, immediately after I finished trying to patiently explain to readers — conservatives, no less! — that it’s hypocritical to hold someone as powerless as Harris responsible for disaster responses, here comes Kamala to demand that people pretend she is in charge or has any meaningful role to play in this whatsoever. Not only that, but for once she actually deigned to lodge the complaint in person, speaking to reporters about it on the tarmac between campaign stops and whining that she tried to call Governor DeSantis and he “refused to speak to me.”
Ron DeSantis has utterly no time for any of this nonsense — he has a Category 4 hurricane on his hands — and said as much in the most brutally effective way possible yesterday. I hope everyone gets a chance to watch this excerpt from yesterday’s storm-preparation press conference, where the governor bats away, with visible disgust, the attempt by reporters in the room to insert Harris into a hurricane briefing. It’s a masterfully persuasive performance precisely because DeSantis isn’t trying to make a political argument at all — he goes out of his way several times to emphasize that he’s spoken with the president and received full cooperation from the federal government. You just can tell how insultingly inappropriate he considers it to be talking about anything other than weather predictions and evacuation protocols. (His facial expressions convey disdain eloquently.)
DeSantis had more time to think on it overnight, apparently. Because this morning on Fox & Friends, while keeping to the same businesslike tone — he was there to talk exclusively about Milton and what the state of Florida was doing to prepare — he turned the screws on Harris even more brutally, hitting her squarely for her overweening need to insert herself into a crisis. Again, this deserves to be seen and not just read:
I think she should look in the mirror. We’ve been on an emergency footing for two weeks straight. Round the clock 24/7 we’ve been working, my office, our Division of Emergency Management, helping people prepare for Hurricane Helene, helping effectuate rescues of people after Hurricane Helene, helping people pick up the pieces of their lives after Helene, and then have to also turn around and prepare for major impacts and maybe even more impacts from Hurricane Milton, to be able to have rescue personnel ready to help people, and then of course help with the power restoration, all these things to do. So that’s been my sole focus, my focus has not been on dealing with Kamala Harris. I saw the news report, I didn’t know she tried to contact me.
But I’d also say: It’s not about you, Kamala. It’s about the people of Florida. My focus is exactly where it should be, and I can tell you this, I’ve worked on these hurricanes under both President Trump and President Biden, neither of them ever tried to politicize it, she has never called on any of the storms we have had since she’s been vice president until apparently now. Why all of a sudden is she trying to parachute in and inject herself? When she’s never shown any interest in the past? We know it’s because of politics. We know it’s because of her campaign. I have zero time to entertain these political games. We’re gonna continue to do what we need to do to prepare and respond to [what] may be one of the most damaging storms in the history of the United States, so if she says focusing on protecting your people is selfish, I think she ought to look in the mirror.
It’s a rare day when I can point to the words of a politician and say, “I endorse every single thing that guy just said.” But I endorse every single word of that. Consider it a lesson learned for your humble author: Kamala Harris is indeed every bit as selfish and vacant as she seems, and there’s no need to look for deeper explanations. I will apply that lesson as an interpretive heuristic to everything she says or does from now on.
As an aside, I will note that Ron DeSantis sure seems like the kind of person you’d want running the country during a time of crisis. Alas.