IT has been more than a month since Kamala Harris announced her candidacy for President of the United States.
And in the whole month since there has been one question above all: What would she do if she got the job?
That’s not a small thing. After all, she is running for the most important job in the world.
If America’s economy booms and the US is strong on the world stage then every country — including this one — will reap the benefits.
But if America falls into disarray then every country — especially this one — will feel it too.
So what does she plan to do?
For more than a month this has been a mystery.
And in all of this time there has been a second question: Why does Kamala not sit down and do an interview with the media?
She has done campaign rallies, for sure. But not once in all these weeks did she sit down with a journalist.
Her current (if missing-in-action) boss Joe Biden showed her the way.
Biden made fewer press appearances than any recent US President.
And everybody knew why. It was because Biden no longer had the ability to sit down and answer questions without rambling, contradicting himself and wandering way off topic.
He’d done much of that throughout his career.
But in the past four years it got really bad.
His aides made sure he appeared in front of the media as little as possible.
And it worked. For a time.
Kamala Harris decided to take a leaf out of the Biden playbook.
But she knew she would have to face the media at some point. And this week she finally did.
Harris chose the easiest possible venue — the Democrat-supporting news channel CNN.
The interview was pre-recorded (meaning that if there were any absolute car crashes, they could be edited out).
She knew she would have to face the media at some point. And this week she finally did
And she agreed to do it with her election running mate Tim Walz.
Some people wondered why she needed him beside her. But the answer is obvious. They are tied together.
And it is likely that both have different views. But they haven’t found this out yet. Nobody wants to be tripped up so easily.
In fact it isn’t clear what either of them believes or would do on any of the major issues facing America.
What will they do on the border, illegal migration, inflation, foreign wars and more? Who knows?
But the Harris-Walz PR team knows enough to make sure that the daylight between them doesn’t come out.
On Thursday night Walz sat beside Kamala like an emotional support animal.
He said almost nothing and was asked almost nothing until the end of the interview.
He just sat there, collar askew, with a sad, thoughtful look on his face, as he (like the rest of the country) tried to work out what Kamala was saying.
The answer was “not very much”.
Kamala has the air of someone who has been vastly over-promoted, knows she is out of her depth but is playing for time.
Answering questions from Dana Bash, she kept saying absolutely nothing.
In 2019 Kamala had been in favour of a ban on fracking.
Then, when she joined the Biden-Harris ticket, she was for it.
Kamala has the air of someone who has been vastly over-promoted
Where is she now? We don’t know.
All she said was that she had been in favour of a ban, and was now against it. Adding further confusion, she said.
“Let’s be clear. My values have not changed.” What?
It was the same on the economy.
She told Bash that she was very proud of the Biden-Harris economy but also knew that as President she would need to fix it. Huh?
On the completely open southern US border she said even less.
In 2020 she called for the border to be “decriminalised”.
Which is Left-speak for “let’s not treat illegal immigrants any differently from the way we treat legal immigrants or US citizens.”
A record number of illegals have crossed the border since her time as Vice President.
For those four years, fixing the border was meant to be one of her key tasks.
But she blamed Donald Trump. Which is interesting since it is she, and not Trump, who has been in charge for the past four years.
On and on she went, treading as carefully as someone does if they know there are landmines everywhere and you have the agility of an elephant.
She did her thing of talking about the significance of the issues being discussed.
But on nothing did she say what she would do about the significant things.
Walz was then brought on to utter a few mewls.
Again there was no plan anywhere.
It is quite possible that Harris-Walz will waltz into office in November on a big wave of nothing.
Disastrous for the world. Embarrassing for America.