In Kamala Harris’s first major interview, little substance but plenty of reassurance

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No teleprompter. No notes on her lap. No aides whispering in her ear. No breaks in her demeanour. No fumbles. No big whoppers.

Also no news.

But one important element of Kamala Harris’s first major interview since she became the Democratic presidential nominee, implied but not stated explicitly: by cloaking her candidacy in the mantle of change, Ms. Harris adjusted the rationale and raison d’être for her campaign.

And though she spoke of moving beyond a decade where “the measure of the strength of a leader is who you beat down” – a clear reference to former president Donald Trump – the change theme was supple enough to apply to her patron, President Joe Biden.

“What I believe the American people deserve,” she said in the interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, which aired Thursday evening, “is a new way forward, and [to] turn the page on the last decade of what I believe has been contrary to where the spirit of our country really lies.”

After weeks of withering disparagement for not granting interviews, the Vice-President’s session with Ms. Bash satisfied demands that she answers a journalist’s questions in an unscripted forum. But the interview also displayed Ms. Harris as fluent on the issues, quick on her feet, compassionate in her disposition and likeable in her style.

For substance, there was little new beyond her willingness to appoint a Republican to her cabinet. But for style, there wasn’t so much a revelation as an affirmation. What was on full display was the preparation and discipline Ms. Harris applied to this interview.

That was no small feat. The smoothness and ease with which she handled Ms. Bash’s questions was a marked contrast with the last time the CNN news anchor was at the centre of a vital campaign telecast: the June 27 debate in which Mr. Biden’s frailty set in motion his withdrawal from the presidential race, his endorsement of Ms. Harris and her eventual nomination by the Democratic Party.

“Harris didn’t waste too much time justifying her previous positions. She emphasized building consensus, and she was effective,” said Claire Leavitt, a political scientist at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. “As a professor, I noted that she sidestepped a few things. But overall she showed discipline and seemed studied but natural. It was ‘just the facts, m’am.’ ”

Mr. Trump said in an appearance in Potterville, Mich., that “people just want to see if she can get through the interview.” That was meant as a condemnation. It in fact set up the Vice-President to declare an implicit victory for the evening and return to the campaign trail the next day having ended the criticism that she was unwilling, or afraid, to be tested by a journalistic inquisitor.

“It’s Iike buying a car and expecting safety belts to be in there,” said Christopher Adams, a political scientist at the University of Manitoba and a leading expert on public-opinion polling. “You expect a candidate for national leadership to be able to do a good interview. It is the cost of entry. At best this can confirm who she is.”

That was achieved. More than four decades ago, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, on the precipice of announcing his challenge to then-president Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination, granted an interview to the long-time television political commentator Roger Mudd and managed only a fumbling answer to a question about why he wanted to be president.

There was no Roger Mudd moment in the Harris interview. Instead, this session provided her a forum to make a direct statement: “I am the best person to do this job at this time.”

Ahead of next month’s debate with Mr. Trump, she showed that she wouldn’t be drawn into verbal fisticuffs with her opponent. When she was asked about Mr. Trump’s comment that she opportunistically “turned Black,” she dismissed the comment as the “same old tired playbook.”

There was an old-playbook aspect to Ms. Harris’s answers to policy questions. Candidates don’t alter their positions on the fly, but Ms. Harris’s repetition of her customary set of issues only underlined the lack of breadth of the Harris issue portfolio so far. ”One of my highest priorities is to do what we can to strengthen and support the middle class,” she said, a reprise of her convention speech.

Battling climate change, fighting the rising cost of groceries, extending the child tax credit, providing a tax credit for first-time home buyers – all these were in her convention acceptance speech or are in her stump speech. She acknowledged that her position on fracking, a critical issue in the swing state of Pennsylvania, had evolved. But she insisted that while she no longer opposes the procedure for extracting natural gas, her values haven’t changed.

Her answers to questions involving the Israel-Hamas war emphasized that she was “unwavering” in her commitment to Israel’s defence, affirmed that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and expressed support for a two-state solution in the region. But she may have softened qualms among progressives and Arab-Americans when she said that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”