Vice President Kamala Harris was pressed about her policy evolutions Thursday in her first interview since she became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, sitting alongside her running mate, Tim Walz.
The highly anticipated interview, with CNN’s Dana Bash, came after pressure had been building for Harris to answer more questions from impartial journalists and fully sketch out how her vision differs from that of President Joe Biden. She has largely avoided doing either in the 39 days since he decided not to run for re-election and endorsed her, instead.
“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective,” Harris said when she was asked about her policy evolutions, "is that my values have not changed.”
She acknowledged, however, that her experience as vice president has led her to update her views on certain issues.
“I believe it is important to build consensus and it is important to find a common place of understanding of where we can actually solve problems,” Harris added, seemingly nodding to how political realities may have influenced her views.
Harris ran for president in 2019 on a progressive agenda that included “Medicare for All,” a Green New Deal and a ban on hydraulic fracturing, a method of harvesting natural gas or oil known as “fracking." That campaign flamed out, and when Biden chose Harris to be his running mate, she naturally adopted his agenda and platform.
But with Harris atop the ticket herself now — along with a policy landscape that has changed — it has been unclear where she differs from the policies of her 2019 campaign and those of Biden, some of which are incompatible.
Harris had not sat down for an interview or stood for a news conference since Biden stepped aside and endorsed her, meaning the public has seen her almost exclusively through the campaign-controlled lens of rallies, web videos and last week's Democratic National Convention.
Any other modern presidential candidate in history would have done numerous solo interviews throughout the primaries and into the general election, long before they sat down with their running mate for a joint interview in late summer.
But Harris had no such luxury, given the timing of her elevation. She has had to recalibrate her policy positions and build a campaign infrastructure on the fly during the white heat of a presidential general election.
Harris is also trying to simultaneously execute a pivot to the ideological center, as is common for presidential candidates heading into the November election season.
For instance, Harris told Bash she no longer supports a ban on fracking because she has seen during her time as vice president that the U.S. can accomplish its climate change goals without banning the oil and gas extraction method, which is a major industry in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania.
“We can do it without banning fracking,” Harris said. “In fact, Dana, Dana, I cast the tiebreaking vote that actually increased leases for fracking as vice president. So I’m very clear about where I stand.”
Still, Harris seemed defensive at times when she was pressed to acknowledge that she has changed positions or asked to remark on the evidence that led her to change her views.
Asked whether she stood by her 2019 support for decriminalizing illegal border crossings, Harris did not answer directly but said that “there should be consequences” for unauthorized crossings and touted her experience prosecuting transnational gangs as “a border state attorney general” in California.
Harris also said she was interested in appointing a Republican to her Cabinet.
“I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion. I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences,” Harris said. “And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was a Republican.”
Walz sat silently during most of the interview before he was asked about his own controversies — including moments in his past when he seemed to play up parts of his 24 years of experience in the Army National Guard.
In a speech after a school shooting in 2018, Walz, the governor of Minnesota, referred to the weapon that was used as being similar to the one he carried “in war,” even though he had never seen combat.
Walz said his wife, Gwen, an English teacher, tells him “my grammar is not always correct,” but he largely dismissed the controversy as Republican hooey.
“If it’s not this, it’s an attack on my children for showing love for me, or it’s an attack on my dog — I’m not going to do that. And the one thing I’ll never do is I’ll never demean another member’s service in any way. I never have, and I never will. I’ve been very public. I think they can see my students come out, former folks I’ve served with, and they do. They vouch for me. I certainly own my mistakes when I make them.”
Lasting just 30 minutes, the interview could cover only so much ground. Many hard questions for Harris and Walz remain unanswered. And it did not have time to delve into the softer-focus — but often equally compelling to voters — topics of the candidates’ personalities or relationship with each other.
There were no questions, for instance, about the messy U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan or former President Donald Trump’s controversial visit to Arlington National Cemetery this week.
Harris has faced growing calls from Republicans and many in the news media to answer more hard questions, and the single interview is unlikely to fully quiet those ahead of the Sept. 10 debate with Trump
“If you turn [an interview] into a remarkable event, then you raise the stakes for yourself,” David Axelrod, the former top strategist to Barack Obama, said on a CNN panel before the interview.
