The presidential debate will be a big test for Kamala Harris -Piscataquis Observer

By Matthew Gagnon

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

I've been telling my readers for years that debates mean nothing and that we'd be better off if we stopped having them. Most of the time they're nothing more than empty spectacles where candidates repeat empty platitudes and torture themselves while looking for opportunities to drop planned “slots” that are almost universally terrible. Everyone is looking for a “moment” on the campaign trail and usually finds nothing.

We hear nothing of significance, there is hardly anything of substance discussed, and when it does happen, it is not seriously discussed. Even the “best” debates are little more than repetitions of what candidates say on the campaign trail during the torturous two-year election cycle we already live through. We don't really need them.

And yet, at the beginning of the year (as I predicted), a debate occurred with major consequences. So significant that a presidential candidate had to drop out of the race.

But why was it so effective?

It wasn't because the debate was substantive. This presidential debate was well moderated and the questions asked were generally good, but substantively it was perhaps the worst debate I've ever seen by far. Joe Biden was borderline incomprehensible, Donald Trump was as flustered as usual (and as usual about an inch deep), and the most heated disagreement of the debate centered on the candidates' respective golf handicaps.

Rather, it was important because the country had real and serious questions about Biden's mental state and concerns about his age. America watched the debate not to consider the candidate's policy positions but to judge Biden based on those concerns.

The question I ask myself now is: Can lightning strike Trump twice?

The dynamics are completely different. In the Biden debate, Trump was comfortably ahead nationally and in swing states, and Biden needed a strong performance in the debate to regain some of his lost momentum and make the race exciting. In the upcoming debate, the opposite is true: Vice President Kamala Harris has gained a lead, and Trump needs a win to regain some of what he lost.

The stakes are also different for each candidate. Trump may need a win, but there is very little he can do himself to really change anything. We've now been through three terms with Trump as the Republican nominee and four years as president, so everyone is used to his style. There is little he will do or say at the debate that will change anything, positive or negative. Opinions about Trump are so deeply entrenched that they are not going to change.

But Harris? Harris is a blank slate at this point. She may have been a senator and a sitting vice president, but oddly enough, America doesn't really know her that well. That means the debate presents both a lot of potential upside and a lot of potential downside for her.

Before this campaign, Harris was considered a deeply unpopular politician who was not convincing among the Democrats, and people wondered what had happened to her. She performed very poorly in the 2020 Democratic primaries and has a long history of making strange—dare I say “weird”?—statements that were frequently mocked and ridiculed.

The last month, however, has been a breeze for her. Many things she was once ridiculed for have become arguments in her favor. Her tendency to laugh nervously at inappropriate moments and smile a lot has turned into a campaign based on “joy,” and so far it's worked.

But even Democrats would probably admit that this is largely a result of the change at the top of the ticket and that people will eventually judge Harris on her own merits.

The real question of Tuesday's debate will be: What will people think of Kamala Harris after the initial sugar rush passes? Will they like her, or will her old, unpleasant personality quirks resurface and burst her bubble?

We'll see, but Trump's debate strategy must be geared toward forcing them to do just that. But it's a lot to ask when you can potentially benefit from historically important debates twice in one cycle.

Gagnon, of Yarmouth, is the executive director of the Maine Policy Institute, a free-market think tank based in Portland. He is a Hampden native and previously served as senior strategist for the Republican Governors Association in Washington, D.C.