THE NEW YORK TIMES: The challenge of interviewing Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will sit down with Dana Bash of CNN Thursday at 9 p.m. Eastern for the first major television interview of their presidential campaign.

It’s a high-stakes moment for their nascent candidacy, a chance to define their campaign, defend their ideas and test their political dexterity in the run-up to Harris’ debate against former President Donald Trump on Sept. 10.

It’s also an opportunity, following a month of rallies and campaign speeches, for the pair to tell a deeper story about themselves and their vision.

But getting them to do that might not be easy.

My colleague Astead Herndon, host of the podcast “The Run-Up,” interviewed Harris as part of his reporting for a profile he wrote of Harris last year.

Stay tuned to The Nightly to follow our live coverage of the Harris-Walz interview from 11am AEST

The interview was contentious, but revealing, too, and I think it’s worth revisiting now. I called Astead to ask him what it taught him, and what he’s looking for from Harris’ interview Thursday. Our conversation was edited and condensed.

JB: Astead, thank you for joining me! You’ve held sit-down interviews with Harris twice, once in 2019 and once in 2023. How were those two interviews different?

AH: In 2019, I was asking Harris about her own vision, because she was running for president. In 2023, she had a record of the Biden-Harris administration to talk up, and there was less incentive to be vulnerable on her own beliefs. But from my vantage point, in both those interviews, I was trying to sift through platitudes to try to find a specific vision or a story that she was telling about herself, because it wasn’t really clear. I wanted to see where she’d place herself in the political moment.

JB: In a word or two, how would you describe that 2023 interview?

AH: Arduous! When she sat down, I asked her if she liked her job, and she said she did — but that she didn’t like doing this. I was putting her in a position to self-reflect, and to articulate her own story of growth and change. I thought she would want to tell a story on that front, and was surprised that she did not.

JB: During the interview, she showed a reluctance to label herself politically, like when you asked her how she saw herself in the world of California politics. How did that shape the interview and shape your understanding of her?

AH: It showed how she does not view herself with those labels and feels confined by those boxes. I think she’s someone who doesn’t like feeling known, doesn’t like you assuming to have figured her out, and I think that’s true politically and personally.

I don’t think she loses any sleep over whether you think she’s a moderate or progressive. I think she thinks, ‘I’m a person who makes big and hard decisions, with all the evidence in front of me.’ That’s what’s mattered most as a prosecutor and attorney general, and I think that’s how she views political leadership.

JB: She often pushed you to define words like “radical,” “progressive,” and even “economic inequality,” in a lawyerly way. What tone did that set for you?

AH: It was challenging. I wrote this in the piece, but it wasn’t just the words, but the body language. She didn’t break eye contact. It was intense. You feel on trial. Fifteen minutes in, I thought, I don’t know if I’m getting what I need to here, and this might be the last time we talk — and it was. I had to really believe that the questions I was asking were ones that more people have.

She just kind of flips it back on you. And I don’t think that’s all bad. Some of the tone of the interviews feels like the Senate hearing version of Harris — which is something lots of Democrats love. You, as an interviewer, just have to be prepared to play the role of Jeff Sessions or Brett Kavanaugh.

JB: When you asked her what the Biden-Harris message would be in 2024, she said it was about saving democracy. Today, I think her answer would be more expansive than that. What do you think is different, so far, about Harris speaking for the Biden administration, versus speaking for herself?

AH: I think that’s the question I still have. Saving democracy from Trump was clearly Biden’s motivation. But what is her message? It seems more about freedom. It seems more about the future, rather than the past.

One of the things that I did in that interview, which I think added to the contentiousness, is I was trying to put the whispers that were happening around her — the doubts about what she would bring to the ticket or the speculation about replacing her on the ticket — to her directly, and give her a chance to respond — because a lot of that was coming from fellow Democrats.

That kind of skepticism is what she has overcome in the last month, by showing that she’s an improved candidate who can get people excited, and then showing that some of the questions people have about her ideology are not as important as what she does represent. One line in the profile that I’ve thought about in the last month came from Rep. Jim Clyburn, who is of course a close ally of Biden. He told me that Washington needed to “appreciate Kamala Harris for who she is, rather than deride her for what she is not.” I think that’s eventually what happened.

JB: What else has really stuck with you about that interview?

AH: A portion of the interview that she didn’t engage in was when I asked her about her own identity and its role in her selection as Joe Biden’s vice president. She essentially said that it didn’t matter why she was chosen — it only mattered that she was chosen. And that’s really turned out to be true. The reality is, the second she became Biden’s No. 2, she became the most likely next person to be the Democratic nominee. And whether race or gender had anything to do with that selection initially is now sort of a moot point.

JB: If you were interviewing Harris on Thursday, what would you want to ask her?

AH: I would want to know what becomes a priority under a Harris administration that wasn’t prioritized during Biden’s. The labels aren’t important, but labels are proxies for a story you’re telling the country about yourself.

I do think there needs to be a story of what it is this candidate cares about, and what it is that the candidacy represents. Even if that is a rejection of traditional boxes, like race and gender and ideology, I would want her to explain why rejecting those is important to her.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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