Republished with Permission
Peter Williams
Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality check.radio three days a week.
The description of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris by American-Australian actor/director Mel Gibson that she “has the intelligence of a fence post” is, while founded in some truth, still rather unkind.
Ms Harris is after all a person who has completed a legal education, albeit not from a highly regarded institution, and held various positions in public law offices until she entered politics as the San Francisco District Attorney in 2003.
But the patronage of her one-time boyfriend, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, and her obvious physical appeal as an attractive woman of colour, has overshadowed both her law enforcement and political accomplishments.
While she has significant support in this campaign, the question that cannot be answered by her backers is: “What has she ever achieved in her two decades long political career?”
Any appearance she makes in the public arena during this presidential campaign tends to lend weight to Mel Gibson’s assertion.
The impression from interviews and her limited appearances at campaign rallies suggest she is a specialist in making word salads, speaks a lot but doesn’t say anything, and really has no clue about what she will do should she be the one to take the oath of office on January 20.
Her unintelligible answer to a question posed by CBS reporter Bill Whittaker for a 60 Minutes interview was so garbled, the programme decided its audience needed something better. So they edited in something which made her look and sound (slightly) more credible.
That subterfuge by CBS, among the more scurrilous acts in the history of political journalism, was not Harris’s fault, but it shows how desperate some sections of American society are to promote this woman way, way beyond her capability come the election next week.
I sense though even the left-wing media have given up. They see the polls in the swing states moving in favour of Donald Trump. One article by Bret Stephens from the New York Times last week, republished in the New Zealand Herald, outlined the excuses the Democrats will trot out if Trump wins.
(FYI: they’re black racism, white racism, the Electoral College, Joe Biden along with condescension, name calling, high-handedness, gaslighting, identity over class… blah,blah.)
What Stephens and many on the left are now discovering is that Harris is devoid of ideas, devoid of character and – most importantly in the world’s biggest popularity contest – devoid of charisma.
Trump has recently completed a three-hour interview with Joe Rogan. At last look it had 32 million downloads. Think about that. Thirty-two million! More viewers and listeners than the first game of the World Series.
I listened to it. It was a fun three hours. Sure Trump was outrageous. He probably told a whole lot of fabricated stories. But he always does. Makes you wonder why the fact checkers waste their energy.
This week Trump will be on Tucker Carlson’s show, with Robert Kennedy Junior doing the introduction. That will do great business for Carlson too.
Harris apparently has thought about going on Rogan’s show. But she couldn’t last three hours. If she did the word salads would need some serious dollops of mayonnaise.
Even her appearances on supportive media outlets, like the panel show “The View”, have been at best uninspiring. Asked if she would have done anything differently to Joe Biden during the past four years she said, after hesitation, “there is not a thing that comes to mind, and I’ve been part of most of the decisions that have had impact”.
Gee. Like the disaster that was the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Like the infiltration of anywhere between 10 and 12 million illegal immigrants into the US in the last four years, when she was the so-called “Border Czar”. Like the spending of more than a 100 billion dollars in Ukraine since 2022.
So four years under a Harris administration would be just like the last four years under Biden?
Hmmm.
Let’s never forget also that Harris has never made an impact with voters in national politics. Her previous run for president, at the start of the 2020 primary season in Iowa, saw her withdraw before a vote was cast in that state because her polling was so bad. This remember, at the start of a race where Joe Biden was the eventual winner!
Harris was not elected to be the Democratic candidate. She was selected. Picked by the party grandees like Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer. That in itself is a problem for many Democrats. All the diversity in the world cannot make up for someone who is just not that politically smart or attractive.
As in 2020, the rest of the world still shakes its head at the reality that among 350 million people, the most powerful nation in the world can only produce these two candidates for president. It is not a great choice.
If I could vote, it would be for Trump. His record from 2017–2021 says the world will be a more peaceful place and Americans will feel better economically than during the last four years. The world is on a geopolitical knife edge because of what’s happening in Ukraine and the Middle East. I’d trust Trump to defuse it far more than Harris.
With Harris, you know she won’t really be in charge. As with her elevation to candidate, she will be a puppet president of the Democratic hierarchy with Barack Obama to the fore and the hawk-like foreign policy that involves.
Trump is a man of many flaws and his relationship with the truth is often stretched. But you know what you’ll get. He will run the show with his hand-picked people. The world did not implode during his previous administration. It won’t this time around either.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
