And when they see their reflection, they’re fulfilled

It was inevitable that when Kamala Harris did the TV interview the Chrises Cillizza of the world have been loudly demanding, they would invent a new standard to explain why she was Doing It Wrong:

This is why people hate journalists. https://t.co/AP0oJNsjYy pic.twitter.com/3Rri0qNZjq— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) August 28, 2024

Even leaving aside willfully ignoring that presidential candidates appearing as a ticket in their first post-convention interviews is more the norm than the exception, the unearned self-regard of the suggested first question is very revealing. Harris should probably be doing more interviews, because she’ll be fine and not doing them will allow the political press to run the kind of mini-EMAILS campaign they haven’t been able to run on her yet. But Jesus spare me the piety of the demands, as if this is about informing the public about important issues rather than trying to find gotchas to build clickbait around. These interviews rarely lead to any useful knowledge about the candidate, unless you value the answers to questions like “why haven’t you been doing more interviews?”, “why aren’t you doing a different kind of interview instead?”, and “when will you be doing your next interview?”, with perhaps a “did you see what Trump just tweeted?” and “is the latest battleground poll excellent news for John McCain?” thrown in for garnish.