Harris should fly solo in her first big interview. She shouldn't need a co-pilot.
Vice President Kamala Harris has faced a barrage of questions in the more than five weeks since she became a presidential candidate about when she will sit for a major interview or hold a news conference.
It will finally come Thursday night when Harris is scheduled to be interviewed by Dana Bash on CNN. But that's already off to a bad start, because her running mate, Minn. Gov. Tim Walz, will be participating in the joint interview.
This presidential election is unlike any America has seen in recent memory, with President Joe Biden dropping his bid for a second term on July 21 and endorsing Harris, who launched a reconfigured campaign in a compressed calendar. Things were bound to be different, unconventional, even a little odd.
Even so, does the Democratic nominee really need her running mate present in her first major interview, absorbing some of the spotlight that for at least one evening should have been focused at the top of the ticket?
Why is Harris sharing the spotlight?
So did Harris tell CNN that Walz had to be part of the production? Or did CNN pitch the joint interview on its own?
CNN didn't respond when I asked on Tuesday and again on Wednesday. The Harris campaign on Wednesday told me that joint interviews are historically common in presidential races and noted that it had made that pretty obvious point earlier in the day on social media.
Nonetheless, signs point to Harris requiring Walz as co-pilot for her big interview, even as her campaign dodged the question.
She had all the cards to play in this transaction. The first big Harris interview is a huge get in a competitive news market. CNN, having won that opportunity, probably didn't want to anger Harris by citing any conditions she set.
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It's true, joint interviews are common in presidential campaigns, usually pegged to just before or just after the nominee's party holds a convention to make the pairing official. With the Nov. 5 general election nearly 10 weeks away, there was still plenty of time for Harris and Walz to conduct a joint interview.
This was a time for Harris to stand in the spotlight alone, to answer questions swirling around her approach to governing, to show an audience she can be presidential. That's not what we're getting.
Joint interviews aren't rare ? but rarely come first in a campaign
Former President Donald Trump, now the Republican nominee for a third time, declared his first bid for president in June 2015. He selected Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate in July 2016, two days before the Republican National Convention. On the eve of the RNC, they did their first joint interview with "60 Minutes" on CBS News.
Trump did plenty of interviews in the 13 months before he sat down to be interviewed with Pence.
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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced her second run for the presidency in April 2015. She named U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine as her running mate in July 2016. They conducted their first joint interview with "60 Minutes" two days later, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention.
Clinton, no stranger to the spotlight, did many interviews before she and Kaine appeared on CBS News together.
Former Vice President Joe Biden entered his fourth race for president in April 2019. He chose U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate in August 2020. That was about a week before the DNC, which had been postponed by more than a month and then was held mostly online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
They conducted their first joint interview with ABC News the day after the convention ended.
Biden had served in the U.S. Senate from 1973 until 2009. Harris, a former district attorney in San Francisco and a California attorney general, had served in the Senate from 2017 until 2021. Major interviews were not new to them.
Harris has a lot to prove to voters
Harris has enjoyed a phenomenal surge in support since entering the presidential race for the second time. Democrats were openly, loudly concerned that Biden, 81, had grown too old and frail to defeat Trump, who's 78.
Harris, who will turn 60 ? 16 days before the election ? is a whole new story there.
Picking Walz, who's already 60 and who adds a joyful exuberance to the campaign, gave Harris momentum. A Democratic National Convention, which wrapped up in Chicago last week, added even more fuel to her campaign.
A big interview could be the next beneficial push. Or Harris could run into a brick wall. She has shifted her positions on controversial issues like building more border wall, fracking for natural gas and the call to shift resources from police to social service agencies. She needs to speak clearly on all of that. Walz can't get in the way.
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Harris has grown more adept as a campaigner since her 2020 bid for president failed to make it out of 2019. Still, she has also hit some serious speed bumps.
Trump's campaign loves to tout an interview the vice president did with NBC News' Lester Holt in June 2021, where she struggled to explain why she hadn't visited the southern border after Biden tasked her with studying the root causes of migration. It was a logical, legitimate question.
Harris flubbed it, coming off as defensive.
Trump is showing rare restraint ? for now
Trump is treading carefully for now about Harris and her joint interview. He posted on his social media site Truth Social a screengrab of a Fox News segment that was critical of her decision. For Trump, this is unusual restraint.
That may be a rare instance of Trump spotting his own vulnerability.
As I wrote last month, Trump announced his bid for a second term in November 2022, but then he sequestered his campaign for 20 months to the safe confines of right-wing cable television shows where hosts avoid asking questions that might set off the thinnest-of-skins politician.
A pair of rambling Trump news conferences this month in Florida and in New Jersey and a calamitous appearance on a panel at the National Association of Black Journalists convention did little to dispel the growing narrative that Harris is catching the former one-term president in polling and momentum.
That's what makes Harris' decision to avoid standing on her own in the spotlight such a mistake. She's inherited from Biden a mission ? to show America that it can and must do better than Trump, who sounds ever more eager to smash through the guardrails that protect democracy.
This is a moment to shine in that spotlight, to draw that distinction from Trump, to offer something more and better. Why risk the shadow of a running mate messing that up?
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Harris' joint CNN interview with Walz is a strange call