A New York Times report admitted Thursday that televised interviews are a major « weakness » for Vice President Kamala Harris.
A New York Times report admitted Thursday that televised interviews are a major “weakness” for Vice President Kamala Harris.
In a piece titled “Harris Has a Lot of Strengths. Giving Interviews Isn’t One of Them,” Times’ national politics reporter Rebecca Davis O’Brien gave Harris credit for her debating and campaigning skills.
However, she went on to write that “one-on-one televised interviews with journalists have long been a weakness in her political arsenal. She often winds her way slowly toward an answer, leaning on jargon and rehearsed turns of phrase, using language that is sometimes derided as ‘word salad’ but might be better described as a meringue.”
Harris has an uneven history when it comes to unscripted media appearances, which she has largely avoided since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.
The avoidance was said by O’Brien to be “a calculation by her campaign” to shield her from “the risks of a prime-time spotlight.”
She described “a nervousness that is palpable from the moment Ms. Harris takes her seat across from an interviewer, looking as if she were bracing for a hostile cross-examination — from the witness stand.”
O’Brien pointed to Harris’ time as a prosecutor and on the Senate Judiciary Committee as the culprit, arguing that while those experiences “prepared her to be the one asking difficult questions in high-stakes exchanges; she has had less experience on the other side of the microphone.
