How Would Kamala Harris Perform as President?

Inside the Mind of the Vice President

Team,

This appeared in The Daily Caller and I wanted to share it directly with you. Comments will be most welcome as well as a response to this poll. Note my shock about the “mock dinner”!

How Would Kamala Harris Perform as President?

For 25 years, I taught MBA students in a  highly interactive, Socratic style following the Harvard Business School case method. My goal was not only to teach my students the intricacies of economics in a business environment.  I also wanted to help them think much better on their feet in dynamic situations by regularly putting their feet (and brains) to the fire. 

Kamala Harris could well have benefitted from such training.  Behind her toothy grin and joyful façade, Harris presents as someone incapable of thinking on her feet who is over-scripted, over-rehearsed, and inflexible, even rigid, in her responses.   

Curiously, the non-improvisational nature of the Harris persona wasn’t entirely obvious during the Harris-Trump debate.  Harris was so well-scripted and so well-rehearsed after weeks of preparation that she seemed smooth and natural in both her delivery and rapid-fire attacks on Trump.   

Yet, Kamala Harris’ non-improvisational cognitive style would be quickly revealed in several softball interviews in the days following that debate.  No matter what question she was tossed, Harris responded off point and with the same kind of scripts she had memorized for the debate – to the point where even fan girl interviewers like MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle noted Harris’ evasiveness and lack of specificity. 

Today, with less than 30 days to the most important presidential election in decades, Kamala Harris continues to doggedly refuse to hold even a single press conference or sit down for the multiple interviews normally expected of presidential candidates.   What exactly is going on here?

Candidate Donald Trump thinks he knows.  In quintessential Trumpian fashion, he lobbed the “mental impairment” charge into what has now turned into a hot mess. 

Immediately, heads quickly exploded across the liberal diaspora – and predictably so.  Even those Trump Republicans known for their pearl-clutching like Senator Lindsay Graham publicly castigated Trump for going too far – and perhaps rightly so. 

Yet, behind Trump’s incendiary charge is a sobering question worth exploring in the cold light of a West Wing day:

Does the way Kamala Harris think, process information, interact with people, avoid the press, and make decisions likely to make her a bad, perhaps even dangerous, president?

At least some semblance of an answer may be found in how modern psychology describes some of the various cognitive styles associated with Harris observed behavior. 

For example, Harris’ over-scripting and heavy reliance on rehearsed responses may simply be what is a well-traveled technique to manage performance anxiety.  Such anxiety would be consistent  with Harris’ frequent nervous cackles.

Similarly, Harris’ strong need to prepare and control social interactions mirrors a cognitive style that seeks to avoid embarrassment or failure.   Consider here what happened when as Vice President Harris received an invitation to dinner in April of 2022 at the home of D.C. news mogul David Bradley.

As reported by Axios, Harris was so socially anxious about this informal “salon-style” affair with journalists and newsmakers that she had her staff organize a highly unusual mock dinner to help her prepare. Staffers even acted as the mock dinner participants so Harris could practice interacting with the group.  

Regardless of how one might seek to categorize Harris’ various behaviors – over-scripting, over-rehearsing, nervous cackles, reluctance to take questions, anxiety in social and performance settings -- the question again for voters now is whether Harris's cognitive makeup would make her a bad, and perhaps even very dangerous, president?

“Yes” is my unequivocal answer based on my four years in the White House watching the Master of Improvisation Donald Trump interact with hundreds of business and labor leaders, foreign dignitaries, hostile journalists, other politicians and his own Cabinet officials and staff in venues as near as the West Wing Cabinet Room and as far away as a G-20 meeting in Buenos Aires.   

Here, I can tell you than NO American president can possibly rely on well-rehearsed scripts either to interact with world leaders or respond to rapidly moving events.  The world is simply too complex for that.

Indeed, any president that lacks the ability to think on his or her feet in dynamic situations and improvise accordingly is likely to needlessly drag this nation into all manner of economic and geopolitical troubles – and possibly war itself. 

To give this context, imagine here a bar joke that begins with: “The American president walks into a bar to negotiate with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jung-Un, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”   

Of course, we know what the punch line was with President Donald Trump.  Putin stayed out of Ukraine, Xi left Taiwan alone, Kim halted his nuclear bomb and missile tests, and the Ayatollah and his Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houte proxies didn’t invade Israel.

In contrast, the Kamala Harris we have seen so far would have no idea how to handle any of these world leaders.  Nor would she be able to readily adapt to the almost daily crises that come across a president’s desk.  Instead, she would be slave to her handlers and speech writers – none of whom the American people ever cast a vote for. 

And by the way, having attended my share of state dinners in the East Wing and watched Donald Trump effortlessly fete world leaders, my own head exploded when I learned of Harris’ mock dinner to prepare for a  mere media mogul and a few dime store reporters.

My abiding two points are simple: It’s time we talked more about Harris’ likely performance as president in public squares like these.  It’s past time for Kamala Harris to, as they say, “meet the press.” 

Peter Navarro served in the White House as Donald Trump’s manufacturing czar.  He is the author of The New MAGA Deal: The Unofficial Deplorables Guide to Donald Trump’s 2024 Platform.  Follow Peter at www.substack.com/navarro