Actually, GOP critics are right: Kamala Harris should sit down for a major interview | Opinion

Here’s something you won’t hear me say very often: Eric Schmitt is right. Sort of.

So, for that matter, is Roger Marshall.

Over the last week, the two senators — Republicans from Missouri and Kansas, respectively — have dialed up their work as surrogates for Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Mostly, that means they are criticizing the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. A lot.

Most of that criticism is fairly standard “Republicans don’t like Democrats” stuff. Noise. But Schmitt and Marshall have both offered one critique that makes a lot of sense: Harris, they say, should step forward and take hard questions from the media.

You know. Like Trump.

“I think his ability to stand in front of a hostile media and answer questions for over an hour is something I would love to see Kamala Harris try to do,” Schmitt said on CNN.

Harris and her veep nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, “remain AWOL from the press corps — running from their record they either can’t or won’t defend,” Marshall added on Twitter.

And, well, they’re right. Sort of.

They aren’t correct that Trump is the model here. Yes, the former president likes to stand in front of reporters and hold forth both endlessly and mostly untruthfully. NPR reporters counted “162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies” by Trump during a 64-minute news conference earlier this month.

That’s “well beyond the bounds” of the usual truth-stretching limits of political spin, the public radio network noted.

If Harris is going to go before the media and lie her pants off for an hour, then there’s not much point to the exercise.

But I hope and expect that Harris is considerably more truthful than Trump. The bar isn’t exactly high. If that’s the case, she should be willing and able to take detailed — even uncomfortable — questions about how she plans to lead the country if she wins the election in November.

So far, she mostly hasn’t.

Progressive voices urge VP to talk to media

The vice president has held a lot of rallies and given a lot of speeches since her surprise ascendancy to the top of the ticket. But she hasn’t offered a whole bunch of policy details. And her exchanges with reporters have come in short bursts.

She hasn’t done a big, wide-ranging press conference. And she hasn’t sat down for an in-depth one-on-one interview — although she has indicated she plans to give one by the end of the month. Maybe she’ll be ready to do so after introducing herself to America more fully this week at the Democratic National Convention.

For now, though, we don’t know as much about Harris’ vision for the country as maybe we should.

It’s gotten so that even progressive opinion journalists such as The Washington Post’s Perry Bacon Jr. are urging her to finally talk to the media.

“A presidential campaign is a national conversation about the state of the country,” he wrote this week. “The candidate giving the same speech over and over again is a monologue, not a conversation.”

Exactly.

Not that the media always acquits itself well when given the brief opportunity. During a stop Sunday on her bus tour through Pennsylvania, reporters got a few minutes with the candidate — and promptly asked her about the latest polling.

“Do you consider yourself the underdog here?” asked one journalist.

“I very much consider us the underdog,” Harris responded.

That was very nearly useless. And not her fault.

So I won’t offer you any misty-eyed tributes to how journalists play a critical role in the functioning of a democracy. Instead, I’ll just say anybody who aspires to lead a democracy ought to be accountable — and that accountability sometimes takes the form of questions from somebody independent, who isn’t obviously or automatically on your side.

Journalists can play that role. So can voters, in a town hall-style situation. Either way, Harris ought to take questions from somebody, if only to prove that she can.

Trump is “the only candidate running for president of the United States willing to stand in front of the media and answer questions,” Schmitt told CNN. “Kamala Harris refuses to do it.”

So far, Schmitt is right. Here’s hoping Harris proves him wrong, and soon.

Joel Mathis is a regular Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle Opinion correspondent. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.