Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democrat Party’s choice to run for President in the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate with Donald Trump on June 27, 2024. Abandoning President Biden, if not kicking him to the curb in a coup d’etat, Democrat operatives anointed Ms. Harris as their better hope to beat Donald Trump in November. She did not enter a single primary nor receive a single vote. In contrast, Mr. Biden received over 14,465,000 votes across presidential primaries and caucuses. Nonetheless, the Democratic National Convention chose Kamala Harris to pick up the baton Mr. Biden dropped on his way to forced retirement.
Vice President Harris had kept a very low profile in the Biden Administration. She did not take a leading role in Biden’s domestic legislation although it bears the Biden-Harris moniker.
Regarding foreign policy, the President appointed her as the Border Czar, but she never visited the US-Mexican border. She had no answer for why she allowed an estimated 12+ million undocumented immigrants to cross the border during her “reign.” Ms. Harris travelled to NATO and met with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky just days before President Putin invaded Ukraine on February 23, 2022. So much for preventing that war. On September 30, 2022, she visited the Demilitarized Zone in South Korea amidst growing tensions and North Korean missile tests, and at that border stated, “So the United States shares the very important relationship which is an alliance with the Republic of North Korea, and it is an alliance that is strong and enduring.” Vice President Harris did not impress her South Korean hosts with her knowledge of the Korean peninsula, let alone the families of 37,000 American service members who died in the Korean War (1950-53) fighting against North Korea and China.
With this spotty public record in domestic and foreign affairs, the country wanted to know what policies Ms. Harris would implement if she became President. Would she carry forward the Biden-Harris policies or distance herself from her current boss. She agreed to a debate with President Trump on September 10, 2024. Before the debate, she refused to give interviews to the press, and finally gave one to Dana Bash at CNN, only if Governor Tim Walz, her running mate, would sit with her.
By the time of last night’s debate, we had little information on Ms. Harris’s platform or policies. We still haven’t much more after the debate.
The television showdown—likely the only one that will take place before the election—carried high stakes for both candidates. What transpired did not clarify Vice President Harris’s vision for the future, rather delivered empty rhetorical platitudes about “A New Direction,” “An Opportunity Economy for All,” and the need to “Turn a New Page” which translated vaguely into “Move beyond the Old, Lying Donald Trump to the Young Honest Kamala Harris.”
With a background as a U.S. Senator and California’s Attorney General, Harris was expected to leverage her prosecutorial skills and political experience to command the conversation. Yet, her debate performance fell short of the expectations many had for her, especially as a potential leader of the Democratic Party. The most glaring issue was Harris’s lack of a coherent narrative. Rather than seizing the opportunity to lay out a clear vision for her presidency, Harris seemed to rely too heavily on rehearsed talking points. In an age when voters crave authenticity, she delivered lines that felt scripted, robotic, and devoid of substance—a policy salad of sorts.
Despite having been a heartbeat away from the presidency for the past 3.5 years, Harris appeared unprepared to provide detailed answers on key issues, from healthcare to foreign policy, let alone take any responsibility for the sputtering economy, high taxes, high inflation, high interest rates, a burgeoning deficit, and increased crime under the Biden-Harris administration. She focused a lot of time on abortion—a key issue for Democrats, the demise of Roe v. Wade, and accusing President Trump of wanting to impose a nationwide ban on abortion. The former President rightly argued that individual states now have the right to decide whether they permit abortion or not. The US Supreme Court sided with the states, which now means neither the federal government nor the President has a role in dictating anything on this divisive issue.
When asked about the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Ms. Harris focused on her agreement with President Biden’s decision to leave. That missed the point entirely. After 20 years of war, the US had already decided to leave. The question and controversy really surround how we left: In haste, in chaos, leaving American civilians and Afghan allies behind, not informing NATO allies in a timely manner, the loss of 13 dead American servicemembers scrambling to organize a mob at Abbey’s Gate while getting attacked by a suicide bomber, and the leaving behind of $85 billion in military equipment to the Taliban. Moreover, we witnessed Afghans holding onto the fuselage of departing C-130 airplanes, and a message of “The US cut and ran” to our potential adversaries.
Ms. Harris scolded Mr. Trump for negotiating with the Taliban. The nature of peace talks, however, always requires adversaries to deal with one another. Diplomacy 101, one could say. Does Ms. Harris understand this key principle of the President’s role as head of state? Instead, she chastised Mr. Trump again for even meeting with dictators in China, Russia, and North Korea, somehow losing sight of the fact that just because a President must deal with dictators does not make him or her one.
In the final analysis, Kamala Harris’s debate performance proved weak and lackluster. She failed to capitalize on the moment to present herself as a leader ready to guide the country through its many challenges. While her record speaks for itself, the debate stage requires candidates to show their mettle. Harris’s inability to offer clear, bold, and specific solutions, along with her hesitancy to engage in substantive exchanges, leaves her presidential credentials in question. She provided an inchoate salad of choices with no main course other than “Anything but Trump.” Mr. Trump, however, clearly has the edge on experience and understanding on how the country and the world works. Let’s hope voters choose him as the best candidate for the hardest job in the world.
