About that CNN interview

The questions Dana Bash didn't ask

I haven’t been writing recently as we are helping take care of our grandchildren newly settled in the Philadelphia area. I’ve got more travel coming up the next two weeks, but hope to be back to my normal MWF posting schedule soon.

Last night was the much awaited CNN interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz. After a stellar DNC, it was time for the sit-down everyone had been clamoring for. So during a campaign swing in Georgia (the first presidential candidate to visit Savannah since the 1990s), they sat down with CNN’s Dana Bash. If you didn’t see it, the transcript is here.

The Daily Beast captured the event well. The headline on their story was “Kamala Harris Hits it Out of the Park, CNN Not So Much”.

The vast majority of the questions posed by Bash during the course of the interview simply picked up and repeated one of the critiques with which Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have sought to slow down the rapid rise of their Democratic opponents in the polls.

I’ve written before on how today’s journalists want to follow the pattern set by the late Tim Russert on Meet the Press. He would pore through statements that politicians had made, finding statements they had made that required clarification and expansion. He was meticulous in his detail and used those prior quotations as a means to get to deeper and more important topics.

Too often, the inheritors of the Russert mantle stop at the first part. They repeat a quote from the past and then ask if the candidate still holds that position. So last night, one of the first questions Dana Bask asked Kamala Harris was about a statement she made in 2019 about banning fracking. Harris responded pretty well, pointing out that she had moved away from that position by 2020 and hasn’t mentioned it since. Furthermore, she went on to talk of how the climate initiatives in the Inflation Reduction Act provide better avenues than banning fracking. But Bash stayed with it, trying to make Harris explain her 2019 position.

When it came to Tim Walz, her question was about a statement he had made in 2018 in response to his concern about teh Marjorie Stoneman Douglass school shooting. He had said that “we shouldn’t allow weapons of war like I carried in war..” She noted that his prior campaigns had corrected the record because while Walz served in the National Guard and provided logistic support, he wasn’t “in war”.

There is a comic bit used by Stephen Colbert and Randy Rainbow (and others) where they pretend to be the interviewer. I found myself thinking of that while watching last night. There were questions that would have better informed the public (and CNN) if they were better framed.

So, in the Harris example above, the question could have been “What would your administration do to address climate change and how would you balance solar, wind, nuclear, and extractive sources of energy?” In the process, Harris’ views on fracking would have become clear within the larger context of an energy policy. It would allow the public to see how she puts these competing interests in play and provide a window into how she might govern.

For Walz, it is almost not worth asking. What he was trying to say six years ago was that he used weapons of war while in the military. To focus on the words “in war” was gratuitous. More significantly, it removed the context of the point he was trying to make — that automatic weapons don’t belong in the hands of teenagers. A better question would be to ask how he was able to garner support from gun owners in passing the red flag laws in Minnesota. Again, we would have gained insight into how he manages diversity of policy positions in service of the greater good.

I’m a huge fan of those media critics out there. One of the best in James Fallows, whose 1996 Breaking The News remains a classic. He highlights there a number of issues, among them the pace that journalists work at, the fear of being scooped by others, and the fear that the media will be accused on liberal bias.

This last part is what tripped Dana Bash up. Conservative media had played “gotcha” about comments Harris and Walz had made in the past. As a result, I think she felt obligated to use those instances as a jumping off point for her questions. Then she could claim that she was “holding them accountable”.

Of course, conservative media never feels any need to couch their questions to foreground Democratic concerns about policy positions or past statements from others. That’s what makes Pete Buttigieg so effective when he goes on Fox News. He provides analysis they never hear. Meanwhile, Donald Trump calls into Fox and Friends or Newsmax or sits down with Dr. Phil and says whatever comes into his mind.

As I wrote on Facebook today, at some point CNN will do a joint interview with Trump and Vance. If they ask them about their prior statements and how they explain contradictions therein, they will be there for hours. And the comments that need explanation don’t come from five or six years ago but from just the past week.

What I really want is for someone like Jonathan Swan to do the interviews, regardless of which ticket is apprearing. He would ask about how policy proposals would be implemented and rightly expect coherent answers.

As I’ve written repeatedly on here, the purpose of the campaign is to give us a sense of how people will govern, bot just how they will manage their campaign positions. We deserve no less. CNN and their peers need to be better.