Kamala Harris' First Intervie 08/30 06:20

   After avoiding a probing interview by a journalist for the first month of 
her sudden presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris' first one 
Thursday was notable mostly in how routine it seemed.

   (AP) -- After avoiding a probing interview by a journalist for the first 
month of her sudden presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris' first 
one Thursday was notable mostly in how routine it seemed.

   CNN's Dana Bash, sitting down with Harris and running mate Tim Walz in a 
Georgia restaurant, asked her about some issues where she had changed 
positions, the historical nature of her candidacy, what she would do in her 
first day as president and whether she'd invite a Republican to be a Cabinet 
member. Yes, she said.

   What Bash didn't ask -- and the Democratic nominee didn't volunteer -- is 
why it took so long to submit to an interview and whether she will do more 
again as a candidate.

   Harris drew criticism for not doing an interview until now.

   With no clips from interviews or extended news conferences as a candidate to 
pick apart, Republican Donald Trump and his campaign had made Harris' failure 
to take on journalists an issue in itself. She had promised to rectify that by 
the end of August and made it in just under the wire.

   In the interview, taped earlier Thursday at Kim's Cafe in Savannah, Georgia, 
Bash occasionally had pressed Harris when the vice president failed to answer a 
question directly. She asked four times, for example, about what led Harris to 
change her position on fracking -- a controversial way to extract natural gas 
from the landscape -- from her brief presidential candidacy in 2020.

   "How should voters be looking at some of the changes in policy?" Bash asked, 
wondering whether experience led Harris down another path. "Should they be 
completely confident that what you're saying now is going to be the policy 
moving forward?"

   Bash asked Harris twice whether she would do something different, like 
withhold some military aid to Israel, to help reach a peace deal in the 
Mideast. Harris stressed the importance of a deal but offered no new specifics 
on achieving it.

   When Bash sought a response to Trump suggesting that Harris had only 
recently been emphasizing her Black roots, the vice president swiftly brushed 
it aside. "Next question," she said.

   CNN political analyst David Axelrod suggested that Harris, by not doing 
interviews previously, had raised the stakes on what is usually a typical test 
that presidential candidates face. But after the Bash session aired, Axelrod 
said she "did what she needed to do."

   "What she needed to do was be the same person she has been on stage the past 
month," said Axelrod, onetime aide to Obama when he was in the White House. He 
predicted the interview would ultimately make little difference in the campaign.

   Tim Walz was included in the interview, too.

   In seeking a personal connection with viewers, Bash asked Walz for his 
feelings about his son's emotional response to this Democratic convention 
speech, and a memorable photo that depicted Harris' niece from behind, watching 
her aunt deliver her address to Democrats.

   By including Walz in the interview, Harris joined a tradition followed by 
Donald Trump and Mike Pence, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and Biden and Harris 
themselves. But that decision stood out because of her lack of solo interviews 
and the compressed nature of her campaign.

   Republicans complained she would use Walz as a crutch, someone who could 
smooth over his boss' rough moments and simply take up time that could have 
been used for questions directed at Harris.

   "This is one more Harris campaign insult to American voters," the Wall 
Street Journal said in an editorial Thursday.

   Ultimately, Bash directed only four questions to Walz -- one a followup -- 
and the vice presidential candidate didn't interject or add to Harris' 
responses.

   This was the second high profile moment for Bash already this campaign. The 
"Inside Politics" anchor moderated June's debate between Trump and President 
Biden, an event where the journalists were overshadowed by the poor performance 
by Biden that eventually led to him abandoning his re-election bid.