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| Harris -- Getty Images |
CNN host Dana Bash interviewed prospective Democrat Party president Kamala Harris and her vice presidential choice Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on Thursday, August 29.
Unlike Harris, Bash is not a former California District Attorney and Attorney
General. A prosecutor might have avoided packing her interrogatory with leading
questions, easily handled by Harris, and she most certainly would have peppered
her subject with sharp, entangling follow up questions.
Prior to the rare interview, about 16-20 minutes in length,
some Harris critics supposed much of the time would be sopped up by Walz,
severely shortening Harris’ 20 minute camera time. The event was unusual – “an historic
first” as the Harris friendly media might say – the only time Harris has been
interrogated by the nation’s media since she was anointed to fill her slot as a
presidential candidate who had received no delegate votes in the aborted
Democrat presidential primary. The man she displaced, still President Joe
Biden, had received 114 million favorable primary votes, perhaps another
“historic first.” Biden was pressured to relinquish his candidacy by Democrat
Party elites, among them former President Barrack Obama, leader of the U.S.
Senate Chuck Schumer, and the Democrat Party’s Cardinal Richelieu former
Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi. New York Times political writer Maureen Dowd has called the
successful clandestine effort to displace Biden a “putsch.”
Bash opened her interrogation by presenting the most
pressing question: “Generally speaking, how should voters look at some of the
changes that you've made [in your policy approaches]? Is it because you have
more experience now, and you've learned more about the information?” This
brought a knowing nod from Harris. “Is it because you were running for
president in a Democratic primary?” A second nod followed. “And should
they [voters] feel comfortable and confident that what you're saying now is
going to be your policy moving forward [emphasis mine]?"
Harris responded by answering a question that had not been
asked. Her “values” had not changed during her political career, she said.
Bash failed to follow up with a pertinent question: Prior to
your elevation to the presidency by a politically whipped Democrat Nominating
Convention, you made it very clear in several interviews that fracking was not
to continue. And now, two months before
the November general election, you tell us you have no objection to fracking.
What value can you cite that would justify your effortless acceptance of the
contrary political positions you have asserted?
The appeal to “values”, thank the Lord, is not regarded by
politicians as an appeal to Christian morals such as “Thou shalt not bear false
witness…” In Oscar Wilde’s play Lady
Windermere's Fan, Lord Darlington replies to the question "What is a
cynic?": "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of
nothing." Harris, a Republican wit told me, referring to the cost of the
Biden-Harris war on the internal combustion engine, knows the political value
of everything, and the price of nothing.
The term “value” as used by below average politicians is the
secular equivalent of the Christian “moral,” with stingers removed. There is
only a political value in asserting on day 1 that you oppose fracking and on
day 2 that you do not oppose fracking. The price of that immoral shift is
weighed in votes cast during a presidential election.
The usual bumper sticker bromides were prominently featured
in the Harris-Bash interview. USA Today tells us (emphasis mine),
“Harris said she believes Americans are ‘ready for a new way forward,
accusing Trump of pushing an agenda and fostering an environment over the past
decade that is about ‘diminishing the character and the strength of who we are
as Americans’ and dividing the nation... And I think people are ready to
turn the page on that,’ Harris said.”
Here is the problem: Harris cannot turn the page on her four
years as Biden’s Vice President – during which time she supported the
restricting of fracking; Biden’s war on the internal combustion engine; Biden’s
implausible assertions that delivering to the Taliban Afghanistan and
Bagram Air Force Base, a western watchtower on China, was a successful
operation; a southern border compromised by
Biden’s executive actions early in his administration; and many other goofball moves by Biden – without
turning against Biden’s evident errors in office, all championed by Biden’s
Vice President.
Removing Biden from a possible reelection effort may have
been the easy part. The hard part lies in excising recent history from Harris’
list of “accomplishments.” The Harris vice presidency is not ancient history.
It is yesterday’s history, to be continued until Biden and Harris leave their
current political assignments three months from now.
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