Kamala Harris’s Avoidance of Interviews Is Anti-Democratic

The argument for Harris to be transparent and accountable isn't based on partisanship, it's based on principles.

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has finally agreed to sit down to a sit-down interview with a major network. But there’s a twist.

She will be joining CNN’s Dana Bash alongside her vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The interview, which will be taped, is expected to air on Thursday evening.

The sit-down interview is the first she will be conducting in more than a month of being crowned the Democrats’ presidential nominee, but the presence of Walz means that she still hasn’t committed to doing a one-on-one interview.

An interview in this format means that Harris essentially is doing the media equivalent of tag team wrestling — if she stumbles on a question, she can always call in Walz for an assist.

Why is someone vying for the most powerful public office in the world — one that controls nuclear weapons — avoiding facing the press in an ordinary sit-down, one-on-one interview? Does she really need a teleprompter or football coach-turned-governor to handle Bash?

One explanation might be that Harris has a poor record of doing these sorts of interviews. In 2021, she had a sit-down interview with NBC’s Lester Holt about the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border that was so poorly received that the New York Times later noted that “White House officials — including some in her own office — noted that she all but went into a bunker for about a year, avoiding many interviews out of what aides said was a fear of making mistakes and disappointing Mr. Biden.”

Think about what was being written there. The vice president hid from major interviews for a year because they thought she might make a verbal mistake? This was someone a heartbeat away from the presidency. How can they possibly handle the awesome duties and stresses of the office if they’re too anxious to handle a solo interview?

That’s a responsibility we expect from the most everyday public officials — people who serve on county commissions or town council — let alone someone who is prepared to take over the presidency in a moment’s notice.

Some in the press have tried to make the case to Harris that it’s in her own interest to do more interviews. New York Magazine’s Jon Chait made a compelling argument that it’s a better idea for Harris to “flood the zone” with interviews because if she makes a mistake, she can quickly move on to the next one and shift the news cycle. Doing just one big interview every now and then will magnify those mistakes.

But some Democratic Party-aligned activists and officials have made the opposite case. Harris is now leading Trump in the polls — so why risk screwing that up?

“Can I say that I love you, and I love you, but as a campaign hack, no. She should be talking to the voters and barnstorming the way they do,” Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher said when asked about her doing interviews. “Again, I say, I love you all, but I don’t want her talking to you all right now, she should be talking to…voters and going across the country.”

Both sides of the argument rest on the same principle: Harris needs to be doing what’s good for Harris. What’s good for Harris, after all, is good for the country. You don’t want Trump to win, do you?

But this elides the purpose of the fourth estate. America’s news media is not simply a giant Democratic Super PAC. The goal of political news should be to get newsworthy information to our audiences. We can only get that news by interviewing politicians.

Sure, Harris is talking to voters, but she’s not really talking with them.

Given her good luck of being anointed to the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket without winning a single primary or caucus, she never had to go through the typical process that involves attending hundreds of forums and town halls where thousands of people can pepper you with questions that allow voters to figure out exactly where you’re coming from and how you think about the big issues of the day. Along the way, you do hundreds of interviews with professional reporters at the local, state, and federal levels.

Instead, her events are carefully scripted lectures — where she picks what she wants to talk about and tells you exactly that. That’s not meaningful communication, and that’s not democratic. A party that has spent the entire Trump era lecturing us about how much it values democracy should really try and apply the values of democracy to itself.

A more democratic path to the presidency would involve doing what former President Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. JD Vance are doing — sitting down with dozens of interviewers who ask them all kinds of different probing questions. The networks can also ask all the candidates to do forums where voters can have open-ended conversations with the candidates that are televised out to the general public.

Here are some questions I’d like to ask Harris, if I got a crack at it:

• President Joe Biden’s presidential delegates supported you, allowing you to become the presidential nominee without winning any votes from everyday voters. If elected president, will you commit to a competitive primary process in 2028 that includes your participation in debates with other candidates so that voters can have a say in the direction of their party?

• Do you believe there should be any limits to legal abortion? If so, what should those limits be?

• During your presidential race in 2020, you supported a Medicare for All universal health care system. Your aides have said you no longer support such a plan. Why not? Do you support universal health care at all? If so, do you plan to prioritize it? Besides America, what country has a health care system you’d like?

• Would you keep Lina Khan as head of the Federal Trade Commission?

• It’s been alleged that the U.S. put pressure on Pakistani military officials to depose Imran Khan. Was Khan’s trial fair?

• How long should America support the Ukranian war effort? What if it goes on 8 years and we see 2 million deaths — is it still worth it? Do you see any parallels to the Afghan-Russia war that reduced the country to rubble?

• Should Americans be able to freely import pharmaceutical drugs from other countries?

• If the war between Israel and Gaza isn’t concluded before you become president, would you be willing to leverage arms transfers in order to bring about an enduring ceasefire?

• Do you support granting 16-year-olds the right to vote?

• What are three historic presidential decisions you admire?

• You complained that Donald Trump is cozying up to dictators. Your boss Joe Biden has proposed giving Saudi Arabia a security guarantee as part of a larger diplomatic deal. Is that cozying up to dictators?

• When you were San Francisco District Attorney, you opposed the death penalty. But the Democratic Party’s platform this year deleted opposition from the death penalty from the document. What’s your position on the issue and why?

• What do you think about the electoral college — would you keep it? How about ranked-choice voting or proportional representation, are those worth considering for the United States?

• 38 states have now legalized sports betting. Legalizing it has generated revenue, but we’ve also seen a big increase in bankruptcies and a decline in credit scores. Your running mate Tim Walz wanted to bring it to his state Minnesota. Do you support legalizing sports betting? Is it worth the cost?

• Should we tax large college and university endowments?

This is a small sampling of issues I can think of where Harris is not telling us what she believes during her scripted events. I’m sure there are hundreds of reporters out there who can think of other good questions to ask her. The voters deserve to have access to the people who rule over them.

Democracy isn’t supposed to be pageantry, and yet that’s what Harris’s run for president has been so far. She’s picked up where Biden left off, but we have no idea what she would do differently from him because the entire campaign seems to be on autopilot.

Sure, she’s winning anyway. Which makes Democrats happy.

But case for Harris to start sitting down and doing numerous real interviews, one-on-one without the assistance of a running mate or anyone else is not based on helping Harris win or making Democrats happy.

Instead, it’s pretty straightforward: nobody should expect to take on a job as momentous as that of the president without being able to thoroughly explain what they believe and handle all manner of questions. If you can’t do that, how can you handle all the challenges of the presidency?