Don’t expect much from Dana Bash’s tag-team Harris-Walz interview

The last time the country saw Kamala Harris give a meaningful live interview, she was sent out as cannon fodder to clean up Joe Biden’s disastrous debate night. She has yet to explain to the country which she is hoping to govern, in any capacity, what she knew beforehand of Biden’s clear cognitive decline due to age or some other undisclosed ailment.

That is the kind of question she should have to answer when she speaks to the media… but don’t expect that, or much else, when she sits for a tag-team interview with her running mate Governor Tim Walz tonight. The entire point of being interviewed as a pair is to blunt and neutralize any remotely tough or revealing question with which CNN’s Dana Bash might present them.

Should Kamala suddenly break out her “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” routine, Walz will be there to put an end to it and jump in. Should Dana Bash press Walz about embellishments he has made, several times, regarding his own personal biography and his military service, Kamala will be there to pull the line of questioning back to Donald Trump.

Essentially, this interview format is meant to insulate Harris, and make sure Walz and she are on the same page, and their stories match. Unfortunately for the country, we are not likely to learn much from her, including why she has backtracked on the several extreme far left policies she either proposed or endorsed in her spectacularly failed presidential bid, the one where she actually received some primary votes (after dropping out, of course).

As Harris performs the same routine stump speech and divas her way across America, it’s the voters who are left in the dark. This is of course her strategy: let Donald Trump do all the talking and turn off just enough voters in swing states, remain quiet, don’t serve up any word salads and wait for the media to push her into the Oval Office. For the most part it’s working; however Hillary Clinton’s strategy was to let Trump be Trump, which… didn’t work out well for her. The Harris campaign has been meeting friendly media outlets off the record for weeks, while she has granted one single interview since she was handed the nomination and installed as a candidate, with her emotional support running mate in tow.

This approach offers the exact opposite of projecting strength and leadership. What it signals more to the country at large is that Kamala is not some Obama-like figure who can take on any interviewer and any topic from Kanye West to dealing with Iran and the border. Rather, it suggests that Harris remains largely an avatar for a cause that is just happy to see Joe Biden shipped off to the glue factory.

Harris discussing her policies with a journalist should not be about who the star journalist is, or what network is awarded the pleasure of basking in the auras of her coconut tree. It’s about talking to the country and to the voters, and anything less should be disqualifying. Kamala Harris is not entitled to the presidency of the United States, despite all evidence that she believes so, and she owes every single American the right to see, hear and scrutinize her.