Legendary interviewer and host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” Tim Russert once said, “I don’t believe you can make tough decisions unless you can answer tough questions.” Vice President Kamala Harris might reflect on Russert’s challenge as she moves ahead with her presidential campaign.
Since her boss, President Biden, dropped out of the presidential race and she instantly grabbed her party’s campaign banner, Harris has been remarkably media-shy. She has held no press conferences and has not sat for an interview with a journalist. Her avoidance of media interaction has sparked daily updates on the Fox News website, counting the days that Harris has ducked direct press engagement.
Surely, every major and minor media outlet has already extended an invitation for her to do an extended, formal interview. Every editor and producer wants that first “get.” And the press corps that follows her around every moment would jump at the chance to ask questions in a press conference setting.
This press avoidance might be Harris’s actual campaign strategy, and it seems to be working out just fine. Polls suggest her election prospects have improved since the Biden exit. Given Harris’s reputation for gaffes and word salads in her extemporaneous speaking events, her campaign handlers might well figure there is no reason to engage the media. After all, the press coverage of Harris from the establishment media has been quite favorable, even in the absence of rhetorical accountability.
Of course, Biden won the 2020 race for the White House with his basement campaign. But circumstances for Harris are much different in 2024. For one thing, there’s no longer a pandemic to justify staying away from the press. Also, she doesn’t need to be hidden because of physical or cognitive frailty.
But even if a press avoidance campaign can work, it is, indeed, a very cynical and rather un-American approach to trying to win an election. It suggests Harris doesn’t trust regular citizens to make wise voting choices based on being fully informed about her stances on issues. It also suggests a timid, fearful approach to the media, quite the contradiction to Harris’s broader campaign messaging that portrays her as “fearless.”
Research by pollster Scott Rasmussen indicates that voters know very little about where Harris stands on any policy except for abortion. In an email, for example, Rasmussen wrote, “The only thing a majority (57 percent) knew about was that she opposed any restrictions on a woman’s right to choose.”
A free press was established by the constitutional framers so that news outlets could act as surrogates for the public. When Harris avoids the press, she is in effect avoiding the citizenry. Highly choreographed rallies and stump speeches create great video and “image bites,” but hardly inform the voters about the nuances of policy positions. Odds are more voters know that Megan Thee Stallion danced at a Harris rally than know how the Democratic nominee would manage inflation.
Engaging the media and showing a bit of public accountability just isn’t that hard. It’s not like Harris has to be interrogated by Clarence Darrow. There are countless journalists whom the Harris campaign could select for extended interviews who would ask friendly questions and let the candidate shine. Most media personalities probably want Harris to win, and thus would not dare ask a challenging question that might derail her candidacy.
A few such interviews likely wouldn’t feature the hard questions to which Russert referred, but the public would still get to hear the candidate in an unscripted setting.
Certainly, Harris’s campaign handlers can cobble together a 15-minute presser in which she calls only on pre-selected and sympathetic reporters and then gives succinct answers based on stump speeches. It would come off as superficial, of course, but at least it would show that the campaign is going through the motions of engaging the press.
Let’s face it, if Harris is unwilling to risk a back-and-forth discussion with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer or NBC’s “Today” host Savannah Guthrie, she can hardly be expected as president to handle an extemporaneous give and take with China’s leader Xi Jinping, a Russian diplomat or even House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
Harris hopes to be in the White House making hard decisions in January. She owes the nation some insight into how she will go about those hard decisions, apart from campaign commercials and pronouncements at rallies.
Jeffrey M. McCall is a media critic and professor of communication at DePauw University. He has worked as a radio news director, a newspaper reporter and a political media consultant.