SAUNDERS: CNN’s softball interview of a softball candidate

WASHINGTON

“My values did not change,” Kamala Harris asserted during her Thursday interview with CNN’s Dana Bash. Lucky for Harris, Bash did not press the vice president to give an honest reckoning on her record as a prosecutor and her newfound, election-year positions on border policy and fracking.

Harris’ first sit-down interview with a journalist since President Joe Biden endorsed her for the Democratic Party presidential nomination was embarrassing to watch.

Throughout her career in public office, a constant take on Harris has been her reputation for being under-prepared for key events. Harris seemed unprepared Thursday night when she couldn’t even give a concise answer to the predictable question as to what she would do on her first day in office, if she is elected. It was political malpractice.

Fortunately for Harris, CNN has swallowed whole the ridiculous notion that Harris is not your typical San Francisco progressive. Author Michael Eric Dyson gushed on the network that Harris is “not far-left.” Even Mike Dubke, former Trump White House communications director, asserted, “she was to the right of most citizens in San Francisco but to the left of most senators in the U.S. Senate.”

I first met Harris when I was a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She became San Francisco district attorney in 2004, after running on the promise that she would not seek the death penalty for murderers. Not to the right of San Francisco.

As she talked to CNN, Harris brought up her history of prosecuting transnational criminal organizations that traffic in guns, drugs and human beings — which should be on the to-do list of any big-city DA. It’s the job.

In 2014, when she was California’s attorney general, Harris refused to endorse or oppose Proposition 47, which downgraded some offenses, including shoplifting property valued at less than $950, from felonies to misdemeanors.

The alleged reason for her neutrality was that as AG, Harris wrote titles and summaries for ballot initiatives, making it a conflict of interest to take sides. But her predecessor, Dan Lungren, took positions on ballot measures.

As AG in 2015, Harris supported a Department of Corrections policy of not funding transgender surgeries for inmates. But by 2019, she seemed to have changed. As the Washington Blade reported, she declared, “On that issue I will tell you I vehemently disagree and in fact worked behind the scenes to ensure that the Department of Corrections would allow transitioning inmates to receive the medical attention that they required, they needed and deserved.”

So it seems the question is: What are Kamala Harris’ values? Bash forgot to ask.

Citing Harris’ non-position on Proposition 47, Michael Rushford of the pro-enforcement Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento called Harris “a reluctant ally at her best.”

For me, Harris will always be one of those headline-seeking politicians most interested in cases that generate positive press coverage.

For example, she was one of a number of state attorneys general in 2013 who went after Skechers for making unfounded claims about the footwear’s role in promoting weight loss.

I’m all for AGs going after corporations that sell goods that hurt people or otherwise endanger public health. But this was just a publicity grab.

And here’s the worst part: She could take a position on Skechers, but not ballot measures that addressed sentencing for convicted criminals.

“It seems like, to me, she was always looking for the next job,” Rushford told me. “Guess what? It worked.”

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.