Morning Glory: Kamala Harris Is Not Ready to Be President

Former President Trump has a track record of doing a lot of what comes with being president. COVID has overshadowed his many accomplishments, most notably the period of inflation-free economic growth, but his accomplishments are still there. We know how he will govern, and we know he now has experience in selecting senior officials. While he is never predictable in person or in his positions, his legislative agenda will be a continuation of his first term: renewed tax cuts, a defense buildup to deter our enemies abroad, support for our allies, especially Israel, a massive push for energy production and deregulation, and, hopefully, a massive reduction in the size and scope of the federal government.

Vice President Harris, on the other hand, does not possess the minimal skills necessary to be president. To borrow baseball jargon that highly values ​​a “five-tool player” or even a “five-tool candidate,” the vice president, unfortunately, does not possess any of the tools necessary to be even a minimally qualified president. He is a “zero-tools” political player.

The five “tools” in baseball are (1) hitting for power; (2) hitting for average; 3) fielding ability; 4) throwing ability; and 5) running speed. The list of tools for a president is much longer, but would include (1) a strong ability to absorb complex sets of data and intelligence and make difficult decisions on difficult issues; (2) extensive experience in national security matters; (3) extensive experience in federal administration (obviously, not knowing the missions of all 2.8 million nonmilitary employees of the federal government, but being comfortable discussing and evaluating hundreds of agencies in the executive branch, all of which report to the president and are managed by his or her appointees); (4) the ability to communicate with the American people by a variety of means, but especially in the form of long speeches intended to convey important decisions or choices, as well as regular interviews and meetings with the press; and (5) political skills in negotiation and compromise, both within and outside the President’s party and in dealing with state and territorial governors, and, of course, with other nations, both friends and foes.

Harris is certainly fit to be president. She’s old enough and was born in the U.S. We also know that she passed the California bar exam after graduating from Hastings Law School after her undergraduate studies at Howard University. Harris failed the first time she took the bar exam, but that doesn’t mean much. It’s not typical for talented lawyers to fail their first bar exam, but it’s not unheard of either. In a 2016 New York Times profile, Harris recently comforted a young law student who also failed the bar by telling her, “This is not a measure of your ability.” In fact, it’s enough evidence to lose some young future lawyers their jobs, which are often granted contingent on passing the state bar exam, but that’s not a determinative of legal ability. You can retake the bar exam, as Harris did when she passed it the second time.

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Harris’s career as an assistant district attorney in San Francisco is already the subject of her campaign speech, as is her time as California attorney general and her brief stint in the U.S. Senate. There are hundreds of thousands of current and former assistant district attorneys in the United States, some brilliant and others dumb as nails. There are dozens and dozens of current and former state attorneys general and U.S. senators. Those titles don’t tell us much. What has she done? What has she accomplished? What does she think Congress should do? What is her agenda?

She was a loyal, if clumsy, second-choice to an increasingly frail president whose ability to do the job is a question on the minds of anyone paying attention. It should also be on the minds of every voter: Is Harris up to the job?

CRITICS RUINED KAMALA’S TIME COVER

In response, we have no interviews with Harris since Biden withdrew more than three weeks ago. We have only hours of chilling tapes from decades in the public eye. It is her term as vice president that should matter most to voters, and neither she nor the president she served has accomplished anything of lasting positive significance. They have spent an enormous amount of money that the country did not have on projects that have not come to fruition. That spending has unleashed ruinous inflation. They have failed to secure our southern border, and over 10 million migrants have crossed it uninvited since Biden and Harris took office. Their record on national security is terrible, and the support they originally offered to Israel after the 9/10 massacre has increased and has been steadily declining since last year. America’s influence in the world has never been lower.

There is no summary of Harris’ actual accomplishments, and what there is is abysmal.

If the country chose its CEO at random from a variety of “hats” labeled only by job title, I would choose the hat labeled “president of a local or regional bank” or “successful principal of a large high school” and — most importantly — “successful real estate developer” over the bag labeled “local prosecutor” any day. I would do so especially if I were informed that the bag labeled “local assistant district attorney” contained only people who had failed their first bar exam.

GLENDALE, ARIZONA – AUGUST 9: Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally at the Desert Diamond Arena on August 9, 2024 in Glendale, Arizona. Kamala Harris and her newly elected vice presidential candidate Tim Walz are campaigning across the country this week. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Nor does election to any local or state office in California mean much beyond the endorsement of the large public employee unions, since those unions effectively run state politics and have done so for more than a dozen years. Harris won election for San Francisco district attorney in 2004. She then ran for and won California attorney general in 2010 and again in 2014, and won a race for U.S. Senate in 2016. Of course, she was on the ticket with President Biden in 2020. She is your standard left-wing politician from the most left-wing city in America.

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All we have to judge Vice President Harris’s fitness for president are her hundreds of votes, interviews, and statements over a campaign career that is approaching two decades. She has not won a single presidential primary or caucus—ever. If you have lived in California, you already know that Harris is never going to impress with her eloquence or skills. Harris is a product of the San Francisco Democratic machine, which usually competes effectively with the Los Angeles Democratic machine. Harris paid her dues in San Francisco and rose in predictable fashion. When President Joe Biden chose Harris as his vice presidential running mate in 2020, he did so because he promised to nominate a black woman as his vice presidential running mate. Biden, whose judgment is no longer even up for debate, chose badly, and we have Harris’s history as “border czar” as our only point of reference, the only certainty she has had under President Biden. Of course she failed there—which is why we have the elaborate ruse of the border bill debate topic. To hide her actual history as President Biden’s leader on all border issues. She held no other important office.

Kamala Harris would be the least credible, least impressive, least prepared presidential candidate elected in the modern era. It is impossible to imagine the damage her policies and staff would do, because they would be so far to the left of anything the country has ever experienced. Her invisibility campaign is brilliant, but if it works, the country faces a terrible four years before she is replaced. Traditional media followed suit and went silent for 23 days. How long will they remain complicit?

Hugh Hewitt is the host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” which airs weekday mornings from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. ET on the Salem Radio Network and is simulcast on the Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 stations nationwide and on all streaming platforms where SNC is available. He is a frequent guest on Fox News Channel’s News Roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6 p.m. ET. The son of an Ohio native and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a professor of law at the Fowler School of Law at Chapman University since 1996, where he teaches constitutional law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show in Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has appeared frequently on every major national television network, hosted shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major U.S. newspaper, authored more than a dozen books, and moderated dozens of Republican presidential debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics, and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests, from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, over his 40 years in media, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/TV show tonight.

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