The American presidency has definitely had its ups and downs over the years, but at least the occupants of the office, and the contenders who have sought it, have taken the job of being President seriously. Until now, uniformly, they have thought it important to outline some kind of a vision for the country, and to propose policies intended to achieve that vision. Even if in some instances you might disagree entirely with the candidates’ vision, at least they had it. Or, if they really didn’t have a vision, or much of one, then they pretended to.
In this sense, has there ever been a more fundamentally unserious candidate for President than Kamala Harris?
Joe Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, so it has now been nearly three months since Harris became the presumptive nominee. In that time, Harris has studiously avoided all occasions to make clear statements about vision or policy. Until this very night, she has declined all interviews with any outlet that might be even slightly challenging. Even more incredibly, she has not held a single official press conference. From Fox News yesterday:
Vice President Kamala Harris has gone 86 days as the presumptive, and now, official Democratic nominee for president without holding an official press conference.
A press conference would be a signal opportunity to get broad public exposure, particularly to people who are not already her supporters. Any serious candidate ought to be affirmatively seeking opportunities for such exposure. The failure to hold a single such event points strongly to the conclusion that she and/or her advisors believe that she is not up to the challenge.
I haven’t yet had a chance to watch tonight’s interview, so I will update this post after I have had that opportunity. However, from what I can quickly learn, she showed up late, severely limited the time available, and filibustered questions in order to run out the clock for possible follow ups. Here’s a review at the Federalist from columnist Eddie Scarry.
The last time I went looking for Harris’s official positions on any issue or policy, her campaign website was completely silent on the subject. Since then, a section has been added to the official Harris website called “Issues,” so I guess that’s progress. But review of that section reveals a combination of platitudes and evasions calculated to avoid the key questions.
Let’s consider a couple of issues I know something about, energy and immigration policy.
Energy.
A main preoccupation of this website has been analyzing proposals for an “energy transition” to see if they are competent from an engineering standpoint and if they have any chance of working or being economical. I have concluded that those advocating to eliminate hydrocarbon fuels from our economy have so far come up with no credible plan for how to replace them. Even as they seek to force all Americans to switch to new and untested sources of energy, they have done no detailed studies of either the feasibility or cost of their proposals, nor built any functioning demonstration project. I would expect any serious candidate for President to be aware of these issues.
The section of Harris’s website covering the climate and energy issues is a total of one paragraph long, and does not recognize that there is any issue of feasibility or cost in getting rid of hydrocarbon fuels. It is pure fantasy and delusion. Here is the entire text:
As Attorney General, Kamala Harris won tens of millions in settlements against Big Oil and held polluters accountable. As Vice President, she cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment in climate action in history. This historic work is lowering household energy costs, creating hundreds of thousands of high-quality clean energy jobs, and building a thriving clean energy economy, all while ensuring America’s energy security and independence with record energy production.
As President, she will unite Americans to tackle the climate crisis as she builds on this historic work, advances environmental justice, protects public lands and public health, increases resilience to climate disasters, lowers household energy costs, creates millions of new jobs, and continues to hold polluters accountable to secure clean air and water for all.
As the Vice President said at the international climate conference, COP28, she knows that meeting this global challenge will require global cooperation and she is committed to continuing and building upon the United States’ international climate leadership. She and Governor Walz will always fight for the freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.
It’s all an exercise in avoiding dealing with anything that’s important. She’s in favor of “the freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from pollution.” OK, how about having electricity that works, or heat that keeps you from freezing to death in the winter, or trucks that can bring you the goods you need to live?
Rather than dealing with any of that seriously, the approach is: let’s just pretend that those subjects don’t exist. And the idea that the mis-named Inflation Reduction Act — i.e., massive subsidies for electricity from wind and sun — is “lowering household energy costs” goes well beyond mere fantasy and delusion. It is intentionally deceptive. Nobody who knows anything about the subject could think that replacing hydrocarbon fuels with wind and solar, no matter how heavily subsidized, will lower the cost of energy to households.
Immigration.
When Biden and Harris came into office, one of the first things they did was revoke some 90 executive actions that Trump had taken to reduce and limit the invasion over the Southern border. The flood of illegal immigrants began immediately when they took office. There is no possible denying that throwing open the border was a completely intentional act of the Biden-Harris administration. And yet here is what the Harris campaign website now has to say about the issue:
Vice President Harris and Governor Walz believe in tough, smart solutions to secure the border, keep communities safe, and reform our broken immigration system. As Attorney General of California, Vice President Harris went after international drug gangs, human traffickers and cartels that smuggled guns, drugs, and human beings across the U.S.-Mexico border.
As Vice President, she supported the bipartisan border security bill, the strongest reform in decades. The legislation would have deployed more detection technology to intercept fentanyl and other drugs and added 1,500 border security agents to protect our border. After Donald Trump killed the border deal for his political gain, she and President Biden took action on their own — and now border crossings are at the lowest level in 4 years, their administration is seizing record amounts of fentanyl, and secured funding for the most significant increase in border agents in ten years.
As President, she will bring back the bipartisan border security bill and sign it into law. At the same time, she knows that our immigration system is broken and needs comprehensive reform that includes strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship.
Does this fool anybody? The so-called “bipartisan border security bill” was only proposed in 2024, and would have dealt with only a tiny part of the problem. Trump had the border mostly closed without such legislation, and Biden-Harris could have too if that was what they wanted. The essence of Biden-Harris immigration policy has been failure, indeed refusal, to enforce existing immigration law. In this statement on the campaign website, despite saying that she supports a new immigration statute, Harris doesn’t even promise to enforce it if enacted.
For one more issue, consider this: in recognition that she is polling poorly with black men, Harris yesterday announced by Tweet a set of new policies to pander to that demographic group. Excerpts from the Tweet:
Black men deserve a president who cares about making their lives better. . . . Kamala Harris will create an Opportunity Agenda for Black Men. . . . Provide 1 million loans that are fully forgivable up to $20k for Black entrepreneurs and others to start a business. . . . Support education training, and mentorship programs that lead to good-paying jobs for Black men, including pathways to become teachers. . . .
Could Harris and her campaign not have realized that racially-segregated government handouts like this are wildly unconstitutional? They would not survive challenge before even the most left-wing politicized federal District Court judge. Today the campaign realized its error. The headline from today’s Wall Street Journal is “Kamala Harris’s ‘Agenda for Black Men’ Will Be Open to All, Campaign Says.”
The job of President is a serious job that needs a serious candidate. Kamala Harris is by far the least serious contender for the job that I have seen in my lifetime.
UPDATE, October 17: Further to my promise yesterday to update this post after viewing the Baier interview of VP Harris, I attempted today to watch a video of same. But it was just too painful. For what it’s worth, evaluations of Harris’s performance from conservative pundits have been uniformly scathing, which every single liberal pundit, after receiving official instructions from HQ, has described the debate using the same word, “testy.” For those interested in more detail, here is a relatively balanced view from Byron York in the Washington Examiner.
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