Opinion | We’re Still Talking About Kamala Harris

Gail Collins: Bret, I can’t wait to hear your impression of Kamala Harris’s big Chicago speech. Tell, tell.

Bret Stephens: As rhetoric? I thought it was strong. She told Americans who she was, where she came from, what her values and dreams are made of, why she loves America, who and what she’ll fight for. There was hardly a wasted sentence. It was fairly light on policy, but she came across as a plausible commander in chief. The contrast with Donald Trump’s Fidel Castro-like performance at the Republican National Convention last month was stark.

Do you think she’ll win?

Gail: One more question first. Listening to the speech, I imagined she’d written it specifically for you, with tons about American values and the evils of Trump but nothing about her specific plans for the economy. Would she have lost you if she’d moved on to raising taxes on the rich, price gouging …

Bret: Yup. The problem with Harris is that she’s a political chameleon — a tough-on-crime prosecutor in one phase of her career, a self-described “radical” in another. Voters will want to figure out whether she’s a pragmatist (good), an opportunist (not good) or a phony (doubleplusungood). One way to find out is to insist that she sit down for some serious journalistic interviews and answer a few difficult questions. I can think of some.

Gail: Can’t argue with you about the interviews. Harris isn’t even doing press conferences and that’s just wrong. Hope she’ll make a turn now that she’s the official nominee.

Bret: She won’t be able to avoid sit-down interviews the way Joe Biden did for too much of his presidency. Otherwise, it will fuel the perception that she’s no better than whoever is feeding words into her teleprompter. Especially since she didn’t go through the process of winning actual primaries.