Potemkin Presidential Politics

As the story goes, while Tsarina Catherine the Great toured the Russian countryside, a courtier named Giorgi Potemkin would run ahead of her party and hastily assemble fake prosperous villages to give the false impression that Russia was thriving. Though likely apocryphal, it certainly is believable, given the well-established low moral character of the typical politico, and one need only turn on the news to know that such characters have not improved since the days of the Tsar.

In 2024, the American people are being treated to their own Potemkin village: the Harris-Walz campaign. A campaign that is all appearance, no substance, and does nothing to inform the American people about what they hope to accomplish. As it was back then, this strategy is all in service of keeping a particular elite from the terrible fate of not having their interests prioritized by the state. The problem, of course, is that this Potemkin campaign will make implementing policies to meet the nation’s current challenges nigh impossible.

The Harris-Walz ticket certainly looks like a real campaign. They have ads, branding, PACs, even a flesh-and-blood candidate on the top of the ticket. But about that last point: Who, precisely, is Kamala Harris? What policies does she support? These questions typically have answers by the time someone accepts a major-party nomination, but her politics have gotten, if anything, more unclear since she became first the presumptive, and then the actual, nominee.

The Democratic Party platform could have cleared this up, but its initial release couldn’t even keep the nominee straight, repeatedly referring to President Biden, a politician the campaign is desperately trying to ignore, as the candidate. Some of this policy ambiguity would traditionally be dispelled via interviews with the media in the run-up to an election. But even as the press has feted her, Harris has been extremely reticent about giving an interview, only recently appearing on CNN and on the condition that her running mate could tag along.

In that interview, Harris was pushed on her previous support for banning fracking. While running for the Democratic presidential nomination back in 2019, Harris claimed that she would ban the practice while suggesting the Senate should end the filibuster to pass the Green New Deal. Now, of course, she’s against banning fracking. Her response to CNN of how she could have two diametrically opposed policy positions was that her “values have not changed,” specifically a deep and abiding concern about the climate “crisis.” Precisely how that value could produce being both for and against fracking is a mystery. 

Recent statements like this are meant to give the impression that Harris is a moderate, but they do not credibly inform voters of what she would actually do as president. This is a consistent problem for her. Harris was for decriminalizing border crossings, and now she is running ads claiming that if she’s elected “she will hire thousands more border agents.” To do what, if border crossings were decriminalized? Unclear.

She was, as she reminded the nation in her acceptance speech, a prosecutor, so one could infer that she would be tough on crime. However, she did previously promote a bail fund for rioters and amplified the Jussie Smollett hate crime hoax, which are not the actions of someone who takes wanton criminality seriously.

Not content to merely flip-flop, Harris has of late performed a poor imitation of her competitors. She’s now in favor of expanding the border wall, after previously calling it a “stupid waste of money,” and, as a senator, voting against bills that would have funded its construction. She will supposedly repeal the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, but she’s also running on a tax cut. On the topic of taxes, she also won’t tax tips, which, regardless of the merit of the policy, is deeply and suspiciously unoriginal.

Then there are the problems that she could address now as part of the Biden administration. Theoretically, her conduct as an executive official should give an indication of what she hoped to accomplish with even greater authority.

For instance, Harris recently claimed that “U.S. Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated,” another oddly similar position to her chief political rivals. If the ownership of U.S. Steel was an issue of genuine concern, one would think the administration would be taking action. Senators Hawley, Rubio, and Vance have helpfully laid out the exact executive authority that could be wielded in this case, so she could call on the administration she is currently serving in to do exactly that. And yet, she hasn’t.

Time will tell if a strategy of just saying whatever is expedient is electoral malpractice, but from the perspective of governing, it is a disaster. Implementing policy sufficient to face the challenges confronting the nation today requires the patient and honest cultivation of public support to build the kind of broad coalition necessary to pass legislation and deliver lasting results. This mishmash of conflicting policy positions and statements masquerading as a campaign does nothing to that end.

By choosing not to run on anything, Harris will have no popular mandate to do anything. This clearly serves the Democratic Party elites currently running the country just fine. If Harris is successful, they get to continue to wield executive power as it suits them, pursuing their border policy at the expense of working people, their green agenda at the cost of buoying China, and their student loan forgiveness at the expense of the majority of Americans.

But assuming Harris aspires to implement policies that would alter the governing status quo in any way, then the first step would be making credible arguments, in public, about her current policy positions. Where they differ from her previous stance on a given issue, she should honestly account for why her view changed.

The country needs radically different policies on the border, on trade, on the industrial base, on workers, and on China. In each of these areas, there are trade-offs to be weighed, risks to be assessed, and sacrifices to be made. Ordinary Americans should be forthrightly consulted in that process not solely from the perspective that this is how a representative democracy should work. They should be consulted because their support is the only way that the necessary political will can be mustered to actually make the tough choices that can bring about real political change.

This is not a process that can begin on November 6. If, as Axios claims, Harris was never a “czar” of any kind, then she should stop borrowing from that playbook and instead present a real policy platform to the American people. It’s the least that they are owed.