Unconventional Advice for Harris in a (Hypothetical) Second Debate with Trump:

And Maybe Something Useful for Walz in his Upcoming Debate with Vance

Vice President Harris has recently accepted another debate against former President Trump on October 23^rd, to be hosted by CNN. At this writing, Trump has ruled out participating in a second debate, though as polling continues to run in Harris’ direction, Trump could change his mind. If a second debate occurs, it is no secret that Harris will be asked some version of the “four questions” I address here that she managed to avoid addressing in the first debate – due to Trump’s incompetence and the failure of the moderators to follow up on her initial answers. The same questions are likely to be raised by J.D. Vance when he debates Tim Walz on October 1.

               Below I outline some unconventional answers to “The Four Questions” (no, it’s not the Passover questions). The answers are unconventional because they do not appear to conform with what many perceive the Harris/Walz strategy to be at this late stage in the race: not make mistakes, not give Trump/Vance any openings, and do not provide any more details about their plans for assuming office than those that have already been released. In other words, Harris/Walz appear to have adopted the political equivalent of protecting a very small lead by running the ball at the end of the fourth quarter, hoping to run out the clock.

               That “play it safe” strategy has its own risks: just as too conservative a running game risks not making the first down that is needed to win the game, losing the momentum that helped give the team that small lead, too conservative a political strategy risks losing Harris’ momentum (though in the Trump v. Harris case, it appears that Trump’s mistakes at the first debate and his and Vance’s increasingly unhinged language since have played a major role in Harris’ surge).  

               Two themes run through the sample unconventional answers that follow: (1) with respect to certain questions, don’t stick to the adage “if you’re explaining, you’re losing,” and (2) regarding one particular question, don’t be afraid to acknowledge a mistake in the past, but then contrast that approach with Trump’s and use it offensively.   

Before I get into the details, I want to support both premises right off the bat. First, the notion that explanation means you’re losing is contradicted  by the fact that in her first debate, Harris herself “explained” things at several points: “you have to understand the context”  (in answering a question about the “weaponization” of the Justice Department), you “have to understand how we got here” (in answering a question about the war in Gaza), “let's understand how we got to where we are” (in discussing Afghanistan). She was right to do so, because undecided voters need information and reasons to help them make up their minds. If Harris can explain the “context” about such contentious issues as weaponization of DOJ or the two wars, she can certainly do the same for the huge economic elephant in the room – high prices, mischaracterized as “inflation,” as I will explain shortly – which Harris didn’t touch in the debate except by briefly mentioning Medicare’s negotiation for lower drug prices (notably, she didn’t mention her anti-price going proposal).

Second, as to admitting mistakes, I am old enough to remember the huge political bounce JFK got in 1961 after he took full responsibility for and admitted mistakes about his Administration’s disastrous Bay of Bigs invasion, urged upon him by the CIA and generals confident in victory. Admitting obvious mistakes is not a sign of weakness, but rather personal strength (Trump’s coin of the realm).  

Ideally, Harris would be the one to provide the following answers because she’s the one at the top of the ticket, and also has been Vice President at the time the policies that Trump/Vance have attacked were implemented. Nonetheless, Walz could be in a position to provide answers to certain of these questions.  

I will not pretend that the following answers would fundamentally change the course of the race, though it is conceivable they could have a marginal, and I believe positive, effect on the remaining undecided voters and the fraction of Republicans very much troubled by Trump but who apparently still can’t quite bring themselves to vote Democratic at least at the top of ballot.

***  

The first and most obvious question to Harris/Walz is a rerun of the first question from the first Harris-Trump debate, with a sharper edge: “Are Americans better off than they were four years ago, given the massive “inflation” your Administration unleashed?”

Unconventional answer: “Yes, Americans are far better off. Our economy has grown by almost 10 percent since we took office while unemployment has fallen and remained at historic lows for the longest period in American history. But prices for groceries, gas and other items spiked in 2022 and Americans are still hurting from that.

But Donald, as a Wharton grad who majored in economics, you should know that one-time price jumps are not inflation, which measures changes in prices over time. On that measure, we have been remarkably successful. Inflation has come down from 9 percent to 2.5 percent, without causing a recession that most economists predicted. In fact, inflation is now low enough for the Fed to have begun to lower interest rates, which will help everyone who has a credit card and who needs a mortgage to buy a house.  

As for that one time price spike, my administration will seek an anti-price gouging law to keep corporations from ripping us off during crises like the pandemic and or wars, like when Russia invaded Ukraine and produced energy shortages (like virtually all economists, I think that Harris’ price-gouging proposal is misguided, if enforced would lead to shortages, and in any event is no longer needed because inflation has come down so far. But I’ve put the reference to it in the proposed answer because Harris made the political calculation that the idea would help her with voters who believe that prices increased because of “corporate greed,” although the fact is that they were the result of pandemic-related supply shortages).

Those pandemic and energy shortages were not our fault Donald. Yet you have been running around saying not only that, but also attacking us for sending out checks to hurting American families that made that price jump a bit higher.  https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/verify/donald-trump-attack-ad-vice-president-kamala-harris-us-economy-inflation-grocery-prices-interest-rates-mortgages/275-bdbdbd95-01c3-4a11-8fb9-398d8ad2246e.  

What you don’t want the American people to remember is that before you unwillingly left office in December, YOU TOO urged Congress to send out another round of $2000 checks per family. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-again-calls-2-000-checks-covid-aid-bill-remains-n1252359. We both urged that those checks be sent because at the time our economy wasn’t out of the pandemic woods, and we both wanted to prevent the economy from backsliding. It was the right thing to do at the time because no one knew then how long the pandemic would last. (In fact, a different strain of Covid, the delta variant, spread through the country after the first round of shots went into people’s arms.)

Here's the thing: Sometimes, medicine you need to take has side effects, and that one time price jump was the side effect of protecting the economy against further damage. But the important thing is that we allowed the Fed then to fight those side effects, and it has worked.

So, Donald quit pretending (whining?) that one time price jump was our fault. It would have occurred had you been in office, too. In fact, you would have made things worse by preventing the Fed from bringing down inflation, since you have been campaigning to take over the Fed, robbing it of its independence, which is key to keeping inflation in check.

In fact, if you somehow get back into office this time, you’ll destroy the hard-won progress we have made against inflation since that price jump, through the Trump sales on tax on all imported goods. That’s why Wall Street and Nobel prize winning economists all agree that both inflation and unemployment would be higher under a Trump presidency.” (If Harris and Walz get the chance they should also rebut Trump’s false claim that tariffs don’t raise prices, by replying with something to the effect, “you must have slept through your economics courses at Wharton, because its Economics 101 that US importers pay tariffs and pass on the cost to consumers. Foreign countries like China don’t pay tariffs).

Of course, neither Harris nor Walz could say all this in one answer. But the key elements of could easily be sprinkled through several debate answers.

To be sure, if I had my druthers, President Biden would have laid out this narrative – both about the pandemic and war related shortages, but about how he and Trump had wanted those checks as insurance against economic slippage – during 2022 as those prices were then jumping. Of course, his political advisers at the time would have opposed such a strategy because they wanted Biden to distance himself from everything Trump. But in this case, I believe they were wrong, even without the benefit of hindsight, and have written so in earlier substacks. Had President Biden spoken the truth at the time, a very different narrative could have made its way into America’s political discourse, and especially in the way the media have written about “inflation.” Maybe journalists (print and TV) wouldn’t keep confusing one time price shocks with ongoing and receding “inflation.” Maybe they always would have paired any discussions of how the American Rescue Plan added to inflation with a reference that both Biden and Trump supported the idea.

Narratives matter, as Nobel-prize winning economist Robert Shiller has reminded us. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691182292/narrative-economics?srsltid=AfmBOorJU50NVRBN_74s7dKGTE8al4cw5VLkxqmxguPyno207q5XlzV. Narratives drive asset bubbles, which lead to crashes. Narratives are just as important in politics, both when well-founded and ill-founded. The narrative that inflation is somehow the Biden administration’s “fault” is one that should have been punctured long ago. Maybe it’s not too late to do it now.

*** 

The second question is just as obvious: “Why did your Administration take so long to address the problem of illegal immigration?” Up to now, Harris/Walz have been sticking to the mantra that Trump killed the bipartisan border enforcement bill earlier this year and thus he is all talk and no action, only out for himself. All true, but will it be enough to move undecided voters who are worried about immigration, but still undecided, into the Harris camp? I have my doubts.

Here's where the unconventional Kennedy-Bay-of-Pigs like answer comes in: “It’s true we should have done more to protect the border, while sticking to our values, in the first three years of our Administration. But then, like adults, we recognized the problem, and we moved aggressively to fix it. We worked closely with willing Republicans across the aisle to hammer out a very tough border enforcement bill that had bipartisan support. It was endorsed by border agents. It would have passed Congress overwhelmingly, until you Donald, told your troops not to vote for it because you wanted it as a campaign issue. And that’s your MO, Donald, you’re out for yourself, not the country.”

And then go for the jugular: “You know Donald, speaking about how true adults behave, let me remind me you that strong adults admit when they err and change course so that they don’t make the same mistake again. They don’t double down like you and Vance have done by spreading lies about legal immigrants in Springfield Ohio. Doubling down on lies is what badly behaved children do. In our adult world, doubling down on mistakes can have very real consequences. Your lies about Springfield, which you knew from the beginning were lies, have forced that city into lockdown, causing economic and psychological harm. Well, Donald, I have news for you. Americans want an adult for president, not someone who acts like an incorrigible child.”

Such an answer, I submit, would drive Trump crazy, because it treats him like the child he is, but pretends not to be.

PS on Afghanistan, if it comes up again: “Could our withdrawal have been smoother, yes it should have been. But the important thing is that we’re out, no longer fighting a forever war, especially given the other hot spots in the world now.”

PSS on the claim that the Afghanistan pull out led Russia to invade Ukraine: “Not only is there no evidence that is the case, but everyone watched when you were in Moscow and said proudly to the world that you believed Putin over our own intelligence officials. That alone makes you unfit to President of the United States. You would have handed Ukraine to Putin on a platter, and that’s what you will do if you’re elected. And not only would that lead to a horrible bloodbath in Ukraine, but with the Chinese watching us back away from Ukraine and NATO, you would be putting Taiwan in peril.”

(For the record, I agreed with my friend and former Brookings/CFR colleague Richard Haass’ critique of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and at time told friends that it was Biden’s equivalent of JFK’s Bay of Pigs fiasco, and that he would have benefitted from doing what JFK did, admit the mistake. I felt then and still feel that Biden’s popularity took a hit from the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, from which he never really recovered. But I will not tilt here against windmills. PSSS – check out and subscribe to Haass’ substack, “Home and Away” one of the most thoughtful substacks out there: https://richardhaass.substack.com/).

*** 

The third question, which Trump alluded to at the very end of his September debate with Harris but mysteriously didn’t raise well before that (maybe not so mysterious, Harris had him off his game by goading time and again with diversions, like crowd sizes at his rallies): “You have proposed policies to deal with housing shortages, small business financing, and high prices. You had three and a half years to do all these things, why didn’t you do it?

There are simple answers to this that don’t have to invoke the fact that Harris was second fiddle to President Biden throughout the past 4 years and was not the final decision-maker on any issue – the answer that Harris seems to have implicitly conveyed, or the one that many voters appear already to recognize.

Here’s a more straightforward, honest, and I believe more compelling answer: “My opponent apparently fails to recognize that the preamble of our Constitution begins with these words: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…” American history has been an ongoing project, one in which we as a people confront new challenges, overcome them, only to find that we still have more challenges to confront and solve, all in pursuit of a more perfect Union. As I have reminded you earlier in this debate, Joe Biden and I inherited a mess, a raging pandemic and precarious economy, and in a short three and a half years, we and all of America have made enormous progress in turning things around. But our work is never done, just as it has never been finished throughout our history, and it never will be, as long as humans walk this earth, always striving to do better.  We know have more work to do to give everyone a fair shot at making the most of their God-given potential, building more homes to solve our housing shortage, and continuing to bring down inflation. We’ve outlined plans to do that, but your economic plan, as economists from Wall Street throughout academia have stated, would both increase inflation and unemployment. In other words, our plan further perfects our Union, yours does the very opposite.”

If this isn’t enough, Harris could always squeeze in the fact that the Administration’s rescue plan, its plan build more EVs and semiconductors here in America, generally have been implacably opposed by Republicans, adding that “You and your party members are resisting my plans to make things even better. But that’s not going to stop us, and it’s not going to stop the American people from supporting leaders who want to move forward, not backward.”

***

Fourth and finally, Trump and/or Vance are likely to point to various positions that Harris is now taking that are at odds with her stated positions in 2019-20 when she was last running for President -- on fracking, on “defunding the police,” immigration, and perhaps others – and then assert she is a flip-flopper.

Harris and Walz could start off by saying something to the effect of: “This attack is a bit rich coming from Vance, who 8 years ago compared Trump to Hitler, but in the past four years, as even you Donald have bragged, has done everything to kiss your you know what. Or you, Donald, you’re all over the map publicly on abortion, but Americans really know where you stand – and it’s not for women and their rights to control their own bodies.”

               As for Harris, up to now her responses to the flip-flopping question has been along the lines “I haven’t changed my values.” I don’t think this cuts it.

               Here’s a better answer: “All people, as they gain more life experience and if they are fortunate enough to have different jobs that confront them with new challenges, they learn, they grow, and they make mid-course adjustments. It’s what healthy adults do. I’ve been blessed to have served in multiple positions in life – as a prosecutor, as Attorney General of the nation’s largest state, as Senator and as Vice President. I’ve learned new things and perspectives in all these jobs. As Vice President, I’ve learned more about issues and challenges that different people outside my home state of California face. Some of things I’ve learned have led me to adjust my positions on certain issues. That’s what Americans should want in their leaders, those bold enough to adjust course as they learn. Think of Ronald Reagan, who came into the Presidency as much of a hard-liner on the old Soviet Union as one can imagine. And he yet came close to negotiating a deal with former Soviet leader Gorbachev to eliminate all nuclear weapons. You, on the other hand, Donald, display no evidence of learning anything. To the contrary, you came to office in 2016 dividing the country, and you’re still at it eight years later. American’s have had enough of leaders who can’t or don’t learn.”

*** 

               Ok, that’s the end of my fantasy, which I realize some critics (and I know some seasoned political “pros” replete with their focus group analytics) are likely to tell me is precisely that: just a fantasy.

               The notion that explaining things and occasionally admitting mistakes, some may assert, is political naivete. Or, if they concede that this strategy may have worked for JFK, I will be told, the US has changed since then. We are more polarized, cable news talking heads (they didn’t exist back then) and TV admen are ready to pounce on and magnify any seeming “concession,” and besides all that, those voters in the middle don’t really go for nuance. They, by definition are “low information voters,” who vote their gut, and pay little or no attention to the words politicians utter. And, oh yes, admitting error, that’s weakness.

               I get all that, and for what it’s worth I think it’s all wrong. Judging from the focus group interviews of undecideds I’ve seen on TV, these people are not dumb. They don’t spend their lives on politics, they are too busy trying to make ends meet. They can tell when politicians are being evasive. And they are decent people, but also worried. Honest answers that treat them like adults have a far better chance of moving them than seeming evasions.

               Then there are those who will tell me to “stay in your own lane” – meaning, economists you just give us (the political pros) the numbers, and we (the political pros) will handle the politics. In an earlier stage of my life when I had important, but not top jobs, in government, I heard this kind of critique, directly or second-hand frequently. And today, as I hope to write about in a future post, economists are held in about as low esteem as at any point in my career (one of the reasons I’ve used my legal training, thank goodness I have it, instead to be a litigator over the past decade).

               But you know what? Some economists, especially those who’ve worked in the political arena, are not as dumb as some may think. They see the zeitgeist. So my rejoinder to this all-too-predictable dismissal of stay in your own lane is this: judge arguments on their merits. And I do have some debate bona fides – competed in policy debate in both high school and college, and have written a book on the subject (Resolved – it’s on Amazon). I realize, of course, that presidential debates are not true “debates” in the way that debaters know. But debating experience in college (which I know Harris had and was on clear display during her first debate) doesn’t hurt.

               So with that I close. Maybe I’ve struck a few nerves?