The presidential debate will be a big test for Kamala Harris

By Matthew Gagnon

Next week, America will be forced to endure its second “first debate” of the campaign season, and once again, it might actually matter. 

I’ve been telling readers for years that debates don’t matter, and we would largely be better off without doing them anymore. For the most part, they are little more than empty spectacles in which candidates repeat hollow platitudes and torture themselves searching for opportunities to drop planned “zingers” that are almost universally awful. Everyone is searching for a campaign “moment,” and usually coming up empty. 

We don’t learn anything meaningful, there is rarely anything of substance discussed, and on the rare occasions that it is, it is not discussed in a serious way. Even the “best” debates are little more than regurgitations of things candidates say on the campaign trail over the excruciating two-year-long election season we already get. We don’t really need them.

And yet, earlier this year (as I predicted) we had a very consequential debate. So consequential, in fact, that it forced a presidential candidate to drop out of the race. 

But why was it so impactful?

It wasn’t because the debate was substantive. That presidential debate was well moderated and the questions asked were generally good, but it was perhaps the single worst debate I’ve ever watched, content-wise. Joe Biden was borderline unintelligible, Donald Trump as usual was all over the place (and about an inch-deep as usual), and the debate’s most forceful disagreement was over the candidates’ respective golf handicaps.

Rather it mattered because the country had real and genuine questions about Biden’s mental condition, and they were concerned about his age. America did not watch the debate to give consideration to the candidate’s policy positions, but to judge Biden against those worries. 

The question I have now is this: Can lightning strike twice for Trump?

The dynamics are entirely different. In the Biden debate, Trump was comfortably leading nationwide, and in the swing states, and Biden needed a strong debate performance to recapture some of his lost momentum and make the race competitive. In the upcoming debate, the reverse is true, with Vice President Kamala Harris having captured a lead, and Trump needing a win to regain some of what he has lost. 

The stakes for each of the candidates are different, too. Trump may need a win, but there is very little that he himself can do to really change anything. At this point, we have lived through three election cycles of Trump as the Republican nominee, and four years of him serving as president, so everyone is used to his style. There is little he is going to do or say at the debate that will change much of anything, either positively or negatively. Opinions about Trump are so ingrained that they aren’t going to change. 

But Harris? Harris is, at this point, a blank sheet of paper. She may have been a U.S. senator and the sitting vice president, but oddly enough America doesn’t really know her very well. That means there is both a lot of potential upside and a lot of potential downside for her in the debate. 

Prior to this campaign, Harris’ reputation was that of a uniquely unpopular politician who Democrats weren’t sold on, and had people asking where it all went wrong for her. She performed very poorly in the 2020 Democratic primary, and has a history of odd — dare I say “weird”? — statements that have been mocked and lampooned frequently. 

The last month, in contrast, has been a charmed ride for her. Many of the things she was previously derided over have become arguments in her favor. Her propensity to nervously laugh at inappropriate times and smile a lot has morphed into a campaign based on “joy,” and thus far it has been working.

But even Democrats would likely admit that this has largely been a consequence of the change at the top of the ticket, and at some point people will judge Harris on her own merits.

The real question for Tuesday’s debate will be this: Now that the initial sugar high is over, what will people think of Kamala Harris? Will they like her, or will the old awkward personality quirks re-emerge and pop her bubble?

We’ll see, of course, but Trump’s debate strategy needs to be built around trying to force her to do just that. It is, however, a lot to hope for to potentially benefit from historically important debates twice in one cycle.

Gagnon of Yarmouth is the chief executive officer of the Maine Policy Institute, a free market policy think tank based in Portland. A Hampden native, he previously served as a senior strategist for the Republican Governors Association in Washington, D.C.