It’s been 54 long days since the official declaration of Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee. Since then, she’s mysteriously avoided holding a formal press conference, a cornerstone action of any significant political campaign. This avoidance was on stark display leading up to her recent debate face-off with former President Trump. The silence has eloquently spoken to her calculated and premeditated approach of dodging the press with an iron determination.
Her strategy of shutting out the press reaches new levels of audacity each day. This tactic took a slight turn last month when the vice presidential nominee broke her interview fast. The scene was set in Georgia, with CNN’s Dana Bash given the honor of grilling Harris. However, the limp discussion conducted there fell pitifully short of being a comprehensive press conference.
Toying with the public even further, Harris let herself be quizzed through not one, but two taped radio appearances, conveniently scheduled for last week. They aired on Friday and Monday, infusing sequentially timed information into the public sphere. This stands in marked contrast to a live press conference, where she would have to tackle hard-hitting, unscripted questions, an event she keeps sidestepping with alarming efficiency.
One can’t help but consider the opinions of critics like Radio Libre’s host, Jorge Bonilla, who feels, somewhat despairingly, that a Harris press conference has eventually become ‘irrelevant’. Bonilla points at the media’s enabling role in Harris’ ‘plexiglass basement’ strategy, where she sustains the facade of staying engaged while persisting with a guarded distance from the incisive press, a horrifying abnegation of democratic accountability.
Renowned businessman Meaike views Harris’s approach to handling her campaign, especially her public engagements, as nothing short of ‘disrespectful’ to the American people. His disconcertment is most palpably felt when he surmises the anarchy that would ensue if leaders adopted a similar approach in the business world. Stressing on the importance of availability and communication, he puts into perspective the gravity of Harris’ unwarranted secrecy.
According to Meaike, he doesn’t envision Harris voluntarily participating in a press conference, where the questions are aimed to scrutinize rather than validate. Her preference for trodding through well-trodden paths, towards non-confrontational dialogues, is becoming increasingly evident. In his words, ‘I think Harris will continue to avoid anything remotely confrontational,’ summing up the persisting disregard for challenging situations.
By maintaining a stark difference in media accessibility, ex-President Trump is laying bare the contrasting methods of the two. In recent times, he has sat through multiple exhaustive interviews, even conducting two press conferences in the previous month. This opens up an insightful comparison between their approaches, which seems to show an inverse correlation to say the least.
With her evasion tactics under sharp scrutiny, Harris participated in a lukewarm dialogue with Dana Bash, a dialogue that fetched her mixed reviews. While she managed to respond to the majority of questions, the presence of running mate Tim Walz was a buoy she could fall back on, creating an impression of dependence rather than individualistic conviction.
The liberal media’s take on this episode with Bash is a reflection of their inability to have objective judgment. Critics fear that because Bash failed to induce the kind of reactions similar to CBS’s Steve Kroft or NPR’s Steve Inskeep got in their sessions with Barack Obama, left-leaning media outlets will give Harris a pass. They might even term this outing along with the ABC debate as an acceptable amount of public engagement, much to the despair of balanced scrutiny.
It is clear that Harris has a pattern of practice that deviates from what is traditionally expected of presidential nominees. The time-honored practice of engaging openly and candidly with the press has been conveniently ignored or sidestepped under the guise of alternate forms of discourse. These repeated occurrences seep the sense of accountability that should naturally exist in democratic systems, paving the way for a questionable change in the rules of engagement.
It’s not just the conservative radio hosts and businessmen observing this trend. The wide-ranging spectrum of American citizens is questioning this ‘tumble in the wrong direction’. The public’s right to information, a pillar of democratic societies, seems to stand compromised in the face of these concerning practices. Their leader’s ‘not going to talk, not going to take any questions’ approach is causing understandable angst among individuals.
In fact, indicators point towards the continuation of Harris’ shielded strategy, almost mocking the fundamental expectations of transparency in political campaigns. A glimpse of this eventuality was seen in the pre-taped CNN piece, where she dismissed the opportunity for impromptu rebuttals, a disappointment to those yearning for the raw unedited truth.
The circumstances surrounding Harris’ campaign have raised the question of unwarranted special treatment by the media. Her actions, or lack thereof, point towards a general feeling of leniency among some corners of the media landscape. Their role in enabling the vice presidential nominee’s ‘plexiglass basement’ strategy is being broadly discussed and criticized.