America Waited 39 Days for This? The Blah-ness of CNN’s Kamala & Tim Show

Thirty-nine days after launching her presidential bid, Kamala Harris finally allowed a journalist to interview her. Her decisions to bring along an emotional support human in Tim Walz and choose a no-Republicans-need-apply network in CNN reinforce the perception that she fears unscripted, uncontrolled environments.

Dana Bash asked about her day-one agenda. Harris appeared flummoxed. “There are a number of things,” she answered followed by very little in terms of specifics. When pressed, she talked, again, in a general sense, of “implementing my plan,” “investing in the American family,” and “a number of things on day one.”

She started an answer on her fracking flip-flop: “Let’s be clear: my values have not changed.” An honest translation might go something life: “Let’s be convoluted: political expediency is my ultimate value.” The talking-points mantra, relied at various points, clearly was “my values have not changed,” which perhaps works better as a retort than “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Her shortest answer worked as her best. When Bash asked her about Donald Trump’s calling into question her identity as a black woman, Harris offered: “Same old tired playbook.” Bash pressed her to expound on those four words, and a stingy Harris gave her just two more: “That’s it.”

Whereas she pivoted from a chance to play the victim, Tim Walz rushed to do so.

When confronted with saying he carried a weapon in war, the former public school teacher talked about his wife correcting him on bad grammar. Vice Caesar is not above the grammarians, either, but the controversy involved honesty rather than proper English. His mischaracterizations of his military record and the fertility treatment his wife used to conceive coaxed excuses rather than apologies. He declared that “I won’t apologize for speaking passionately” on guns and access to reproductive treatments, as though not his ethical lapses but political enthusiasms ignited the controversies.

Harris confirmed that her upcoming debate amounts to her first time speaking to Donald Trump. She refused to disown the Biden economy when given the chance. She described the current president as “intelligent” and “smart”; Bash did not, in her big failing as interlocutor, ask her about his decline and when she first noticed it. She straddled the fence on the Middle East, saying, “Israel has a right to defend itself” as she conceded that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”

Like so many of her answers, and the 39-day gap between announcing her candidacy and taking an interview question, it left viewers wondering what she actually believes. It all bespoke a strategy of running out the clock without trying to make a play before Nov. 5. If journalists won’t ask, Harris certainly won’t tell. And if she does, she will do so in her native tongue. Harris speaks, as her first language, Platitude.

She spoke of “a new way forward,” blah, blah, blah, “the climate crisis is real,” blah, blah, blah, “It is important to build consensus,” blah, blah, blah, “Stand true to our principles,” blah, blah, blah, “spent my career inviting diversity of opinion,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

That, in a word, sums up the interview. It was neither helpful nor damaging but blah. The most common verbal reaction to the much-anticipated conversation, which probably lasted 30 minutes or less given the periodic breaks before its 9:49 p.m. Eastern time ending, from friends and foes was that: blah.

Performances, of course, can elicit worse reactions than blah. The last time a Democratic presidential candidate appeared on CNN, the party faithful, of course, muttered a four-letter word other than “blah.”

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