COMMENTARY: We see what we want to see with our candidates

After complaining that Kamala Harris had not gone into the lion’s den of interviews, namely the Newsmaxes or the Washington Examiners or even the Salem Radios, the VP surprised me and jumped right into the ring last week with Fox News anchor Bret Baier.

Either she has acquired a new sense of being able to persuade people without drowning the message in croutons and Thousand Island dressing, or she’s panicking and thinks there might be some independents ripe for the plucking in that particular demographic.

The interview wasn’t enough to make any real impact because 30 minutes barely allows you to scratch the surface of the most pressing issues. But it helped solidify the impression I’ve had all along, ever since the baton got shoved into Kamala’s hands: We see what we want to see, nothing more and nothing less.

It’s not just about the Democratic nominee. Donald Trump, JD Vance and Tim Walz are equally chameleon-like in their appeal, or lack thereof. We invest these men with qualities and characteristics that we want them to possess, not things that are quantifiably true.

But there is something about the woman that raises it to a whole new level. And it didn’t start with Harris.

I’m old enough to remember when Bill Clinton pointed to his wife and said that if you elected him, you would get the package: “Billary.” He included her in Cabinet meetings. He sought her counsel regularly. He freed her from baking cookies and listening to Tammy Wynette on a loop and he even gave her a dossier: health care reform.

She was as successful with that as Kamala was with fixing the border, which is to say she went down in flames.

But that set the stage for the country’s relationship with Hillary Clinton, making her into one of the most controversial and galvanizing political figures of all time.

Some women identified closely with her because of their age and shared experience. Hillary Clinton was a classic boomer, a member of my own generation who was born at its inception while I tagged along a year and a half before it ended.

Women looked at her through the prism of their own diverse experiences, and the Hillary that appeared to her friend Madeline Albright, she of the ‘there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support women’ is very different from the Hillary who referred to Pennsylvania mothers with five children and no desire to work outside of the home as part of a “basket of deplorables.”

It’s what I call the Rashomon syndrome.

Akira Kurosawa’s classic film introduced us to the concept that there is your truth, my truth, his truth and her truth, and that there might not be a distinct truth that exists separate and apart from our personal prejudices.

Human beings are essentially incapable of stripping away our biases and looking at things as they are. We might think we can, but we really can’t. And that’s exponentially so with political women.

As I said before, we can have strong feelings about male politicians, but women trigger something tribal. Two words, besides Hillary and Clinton: Sarah and Palin.

For that reason, when I saw Kamala-and-Harris answering Baier’s questions, I saw a woman in the process of deflection. I saw a woman who showed false empathy for the mothers of young girls who had been killed by foreign nationals.

I saw a woman who laughingly suggested Trump was on the same page with her about transgender surgery for inmates.

I saw a woman who kept whining about being interrupted, an updated version of Elizabeth “Yet She Persisted” Warren.

But when I waded into social media afterward, I found that a lot of progressives thought that she had aced the test, and shown herself to be blessed with grit, resilience, and, God help me, joy.

Where I saw ying, they saw yang.

Where I thought she was weak, they saw a female Atlas, hoisting the hopes of the Democrats on her padded shoulders.

As I was saying, Rashomon.

I do believe that there is a separate and distinct truth. There are immutable verities.

But most of us are unfamiliar with them and have a hard time dealing with them if they challenge our biases.

So people who desperately want Kamala to win will see her as a winner. And those who want her to lose will find every reason to see the opposite.

I think that Mark Twain said it best: “But it was ever thus, all through my life: Whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn’t strength of mind enough to believe it.”

Or see it.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times. Contact her at cflowers1961@gmail.com.