When NBC's Holt interviewed Harris...

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2024

...was he fatuous all the way down? Today, we'll reluctantly disagree with several things Jonathan Chait has said.

Rather, we'll semi-disagree, on a provisional basis. The first two statements come in the passage shown below from Chait's new post for New York magazine.

Should Candidate Harris give lots of interviews? Chait believes that the answer is yes, and he could always be right. 

On the other hand, he could always be wrong! Headline included, the first passage in question says this:

Why Kamala Harris Is Safer Giving More Interviews

[...]

The campaign’s evident fear of exposing the candidate to interviews stems from a handful of bad experiences during Harris’s first couple years as vice-president. Harris’s role was poorly defined, and President Biden had saddled her with an impossible job (sometimes described, inaccurately, as “border czar” when she was attempting to work on root causes of the migration surge).

Harris had a poor interview with Lester Holt, in which she failed to provide a convincing answer for why she hadn’t visited the border (it was not her job). That interview had an inordinate impact on her public persona because there was little else to shape it.

Suggestion! As far as we know, no one in the Biden administration ever called Harris the "border czar," with all that term might suggest. The inaccurate descriptions came from Republicans, and they also came from our mental giants in the mainstream and conservative press.

We think that point should be explicitly stated. As far as we know, no one in the Biden Admin dubbed her "the border czar," with all that the term might suggest.

We move to a possible point of flat disagreement. Did Harris "have a poor interview with Lester Holt" back in June 2021—in Guatemala City, no less—a poor interview which largely turned on the fact that she hadn't yet visited the southern border?

It all depends on what the meaning of "poor interview with Lester Holt" is! From that day to this, it has been relentlessly said that Harris "had a poor interview" that day. But before we're done this week, we're going to pose an important question:

Was Harris responsible for the "poor interview," through some failure to give "a convincing answer?" Or is it possible that it was the lordly Holt, reciting talking points again and again, who behaved in a fatuous manner?

Before the week is done, we'll show you the receipts. For now, we move ahead to one other statement Chait makes in his new post:

The correct takeaway from this experience [with Holt] shouldn’t be that Harris needs to avoid interviews. It’s that a dearth of interviews creates a situation in which a single interview has an outsize effect on her public image. That creates the vicious cycle in which she still seems to be mentally trapped: Fear of interviews makes every interview far more important, thus raising the cost of giving a bad answer, thus making her more hesitant to do interviews.

The opposite approach would be to flood the zone with interviews. Not all of them have to be brand-name national reporters. Local news stations have real journalists who ask questions their audiences care about. But, yes, getting Harris out into the news several times a week is actually a much safer strategy. If she gives a bad answer, there will be a news cycle about it, but she will be back in the news a day or two later talking about something else.

The most famous example of a politician exploiting media attention is John McCain, who let reporters talk to him on the record for hours on end. McCain committed gaffes all the time, but the gaffes didn’t matter. Now, McCain may have enjoyed a unique, non-replicable relationship with the news media. But you can see other, more recent figures using aspects of this model. Pete Buttigieg built a whole candidacy around putting himself out there constantly. And Mayor Pete may be an unusually skilled communicator, but he did slip up from time to time—it just didn’t matter much.

Should Harris do a lot of interviews? Maybe yes, maybe no. 

We assume that would depend, in part, on how fully she has prepared her policy platform in the few weeks she's had to do so. Also, on how well she has mastered her newly formed, rushed platform. 

Most major candidates have years to get ready for such events. Candidate Harris has had four weeks.

Finally, regarding McCain:

Chait is right! During Campaign 2000, McCain did commit gaffes all the time, and the gaffes didn’t matter. But that was because, as Chait suggests, McCain was a ginormous press corps darling. Journalists actively disappeared his endless misstatements. Some even said so, in print!

It isn't like that for Candidate Harris, and it's not likely to get that way. Candidate Harris isn't McCain. She won't receive that treatment.

During the 2000 campaign, McCain benefitted from the kind of relationship which had been enjoyed by Candidate Kennedy in 1960. In this morning's report, we quoted from Theodore White about the way the Kennedy press corps behaved on the Kennedy plane.

Candidate Harris won't be treated that way—and a giant Murdoch empire looms, awaiting any type of real or alleged mistake. 

(The Fox News Channel barely existed during Campaign 2000. Today, they start propagandizing at 5 p.m.—and the channel's garbage can opens promptly at 10.)

At any rate, who created that "bad interview," the lady or the tiger? Is it possible that it was actually the interviewer—the fellow named Holt—who drove that fateful interview session out onto Fatuous Lane?

We'll give you the links by the end of the week. Is it possible that Holt's behavior that fateful day was perhaps substantially fatuous, even fatuous all the way down?