Opinion | Why Can’t Kamala Harris Just Say This?

There’s sustained criticism that Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t provided detailed answers to questions about changes in her positions. Why can’t candidates own that kind of transformation? What would be wrong, in Harris’s case, with saying something like this?

It’s true that I once sang a softer, more permissive tune about the U.S. border, even raising my hand, along with other Democrats, during that frequently mentioned 2020 primary debate when we were asked if we would decriminalize illegal crossings. Unlike another presidential candidate I needn’t name, I’m not going to fictionalize history.

But I also don’t feel bound by my own.

None of us should, because we’re always learning and always growing, or at least we should be: That’s a sign of humility, curiosity, openness. Show me someone who believes and says the exact same things about the world that she did 20 or 10 or even five years ago and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t been properly living in it.

I spoke of banning fracking, but I know more now. That’s why I don’t speak of it any longer. When I did, my political experience was confined largely to California, whose residents had been my primary obligation, and that state’s energy, industrial and environmental profiles differ from the country’s.

But as vice president, I’ve looked at all of America, through the eyes of all of its residents, and that has afforded me a panoramic education and view. I better understand the disruption that an imminent end to fracking would cause. I better understand the enormous national asset of an array of energy sources. I have adapted and adjusted accordingly.

Why do so many vice presidents run for president? Sure, it’s because we’ve been eyeing and ogling that gilded station up close and, in most cases, we had designs on it before we settled for first runner-up. But it’s also because our proximity to power has given us an extraordinary trove of information, an unrivaled exposure to expertise and a privileged series of lessons. We’re better prepared than we once were — we’re smarter. And smarter means we’ve revisited many of our past assumptions. How could it be any other way?

In many senses, I’m the same person I was when I became a prosecutor and then a district attorney and then the attorney general of California and then a U.S. senator and now the vice president. There’s no rewriting or erasing how my mother brought me up — to work hard, fight for justice and respect everyone. There’s no reconfiguring the shape and bigness of my heart. That’s what I mean when I say that my values haven’t changed. I’ve taken and will always take the positions that, in my best judgment, are as fair as they can be to the largest number of people while also being as sensitive as possible to the most disadvantaged and vulnerable among us.

But my judgment is no more fixed than our circumstances, which are ever in flux, and my comprehension of them, which is ever more refined. I revise it in accordance with where we are, what we need at that moment and my increasingly mature assessment of what we can hope to accomplish. So I’m a different person, too — enlarged by accruing experiences, additional insights, fresh epiphanies.

You can be cynical and call that rudderless. Or you can be generous and call it dynamic. Flipping and flopping are fluidity by other names.

I don’t know when we became so obsessed with “gotcha” revelations of a politician’s swerves, and I don’t know why we cast them as character defects. They aren’t, not necessarily. And to any reasonable voter, they should matter less than a politician’s truthfulness, empathy and efforts to unite Americans. Judge me on those scores.

Judge my opponent that way, too. Ask yourselves which of us is living in a realm of facts. Which is being more careful not to incite Americans to fear and hatred of one another. And — you bet — which is spreading more joy.

By all means, consider our constancy. But consider it in the present: Which of us seems more emotionally stable? Which delivers the same message on Tuesday as on Saturday and to one group of voters as to another? Are the positions and intentions that we’re articulating now clear and sensible?

I think that matters more than a timeline of my remarks about private health insurance.

I’m not some Marxist in hiding. I’m not some moderate come lately. I’m a work in earnest progress. And I hope never to see the day when I can no longer say that.

For the Love of Sentences

In The New Yorker, Daniel Immerwahr revisited the “obliviousness” of former President Ronald Reagan — who trafficked in the big picture and pretty images and words — to the details of scandals in his administration: “Holding Reagan accountable felt like a category error, like trying to convict a squirrel of trespassing.” (Thanks to Nancy Chek of Silver Spring, Md., for nominating this.)

In an article in The Atlantic about how the comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan helped to create a distinctive “manosphere” in Texas’ capital city, Helen Lewis observed: “Austin is at the nexus of a Venn diagram of ‘has culture,’ ‘has gun ranges,’ ‘has low taxes’ and ‘has kombucha.’” (Cathy Osborne, Cincinnati)

Also in The Atlantic, Russell Moore responded to the threats against immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, after Republicans promoted the fiction that they were eating pets: “When we are willing to see children terrorized rather than stop telling lies about their families, we should step back, forget about our dogs and cats for a moment, and ask who abducted our consciences.” (Doug Hjelmstad, Gothenburg, Neb.)

In The Baltimore Sun, Dan Rodricks quipped: “Donald Trump saying he won’t debate Kamala Harris a second time is like the Thanksgiving turkey saying he won’t be available for Christmas dinner.” (Barbara Sale, Baltimore)

In The Washington Post, Ron Charles alluded to Trump’s pet-eating peeve while drawing attention to the former president’s separate denunciation of Mark Esper, who served as the secretary of the Army during the Trump administration: “Amid the sprawling smorgasbord of deceit, it was just an appetizer — like, say, a Chihuahua — but it bears scrutiny.” (John Jacoby, Cambridge, Mass.)

Also in The Post, Kimberly Harrington weighed in on the actress Gillian Anderson’s new book, “Want,” which invited women to write to Anderson anonymously about their sexual fantasies: “Of course, there are some expected classics — threesomes, group sex, being watched — but I bet you weren’t expecting a sex robot. Or an alien with curious and talented tentacles. I know I wasn’t. It would be easy to feel uncomfortable, perhaps even laugh, but instead the inclusion of letters like these makes clear that the joy and freedom in indulging one’s sexual imagination is that no one else can yuck your yum.” (Paula Mackey, St. Paul, Minn.)

In The Times, Dwight Garner reviewed the short story collection “Rejection,” by Tony Tulathimutte: “This book is so cold and lonely you could hang meat in it.” (Michael Gardner, Charlotte, N.C., and Rick Treitman, Lexington, Mass.)

Also in The Times, Dan Barry digested the disappearance of liverwurst, which he’ll miss despite its complicated appeal: “We all hold on to things that return us to where we came from, back to a place centered more in time than in geography. A certain doll, a certain television show, a certain snack — they are the lifesavers we cling to as the riptide of the years pulls us farther and farther from familiar shores.” (Joe Hornbaker, Covington, Ky., and Sarah Dinsmore, Wiscasset, Maine, among others)

And Bret Stephens urged his conversation partner, Gail Collins, to be discerning with her concerns: “Only your finest whine — Châteauneuf-du-Kvetch.” (Mary Beth Coonan, St. Paul, Minn., and Conrad Macina, Landing, N.J., among others)

Finally, in The Dispatch, Kevin D. Williamson used a Spanish term for a kind of military dictator to describe the 45th — and maybe 47th — American president: “Trump is a would-be caudillo, but his cowardice has largely spared us having to fight him, because he prefers to hide behind lawyers and then, after his lawyers get laughed out of court, to rage about the judges from the safe remove of social media. He is the Walter Mitty of Augusto Pinochets.” (Meg Grove, St. Paul, Minn.)

I was equally fond of Williamson’s words in another Dispatch article, titled “The Anti-Americanism of Donald Trump”: “Trump is a funny kind of patriot. He loves America — except for the cities, the people who live in the cities, about half of the states, the universities, professional sports leagues, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the legal system, immigrants, the culture.” Williamson went on to note that “Trump’s enemies are all Americans, his friends are all foreign dictators, and his money lives in Dubai and Indonesia. Some nationalist.”

To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.

What I’m Reading, Watching and Listening To

• “As life gets faster, we have become more impatient about everything,” Christine Rosen wrote in an essay in The Free Press last week that occupies a familiar genre — the one that rues our waning capacities for stillness, for discipline and for deferring gratification — but fills it with fresh examples and gives it a felicitous new nomenclature, present in the title: “The Lost Art of Waiting.”
• The latest M. Night Shyamalan movie, “Trap,” which began streaming for a rental fee on Amazon Prime and Apple TV+ several weeks ago, is frequently nonsensical and utterly indulgent, so I’m not exactly recommending it. The sluggishly paced first half squanders so much time on the concert performance of an R&B singer who just so happens to be played by Shyamalan’s budding musician daughter, Saleka, that the movie can seem like the grandest, gaudiest paternal favor ever. But if you can forgive a surfeit of dross for a nugget of gold, Josh Hartnett’s Jekyll-Hyde lead performance as a suburban father with a serial-killer alter ego is mesmerizing and revelatory: Who knew that Hartnett — made famous by heartthrob roles decades ago, in his early 20s — had such acting chops? His performance is one of those, like Toni Collette’s in the 2018 horror movie “Hereditary,” that’d be contending for awards if it were in a different project.
• Two new — well, to me — songs I’ve been enjoying: “Hey Cowboy,” by Devon Cole, released two years ago, a come-hither pop ditty in chaps and spurs, and “I Don’t Live Here Anymore,” by the War on Drugs, a 2021 song that creates a whole lush soundscape and harbors an extra special treat. Those female voices that chime in during the choruses? When I found the song’s official video, I discovered that they belonged to the two women who front Lucius, a band whose live concerts I’ve attended and adored. Lucius and the War on Drugs happen to be touring right now with the National.

On a Personal (by Which I Mean Regan) Note

There are dogs who can’t wait to run free. Then there are dogs who can’t bear to run far.

Regan belongs to the latter group.

Don’t get me wrong: She itches for and visibly relishes the stretches of our walks when we’re in the woods, she’s released from her leash and she can dart this way and that, toward a sound or a squirrel or something else that piques her curiosity.

But always, she boomerangs back. She doesn’t like to lose her bearings, and I’m her bearings. She doesn’t want to shirk her responsibility, and I’m that, too.

I’m guessing her thinking, obviously. I’m surely anthropomorphizing, too. But what’s the point of pets (do not say pâté — we’re moving on from last week’s debate) without a heavy dose of anthropomorphism? Besides, there are clues to Regan’s reflections, such as what she does whenever she reaches a fork in the trail before I do. She proceeds only a few strides in one of the two possible directions before she freezes, looks backward and gets a “yes” or “no” from me. While she may simply be subordinating her desires to mine, it’s also possible that she’s making sure she doesn’t wind up alone.

Or that I’m not abandoned. She’s a herding dog, I suppose — one half of her is Australian shepherd and there’s a dab of Old English sheepdog in the rest — and perhaps that casts me in the role of flock. I’ve definitely noticed, on those occasions when she accompanies a group of people on a long woodland walk or hike, that she’s unusually alert to and unsettled by a straggler or stragglers. She seems intent on our sticking together, in a tight knot.

I believe that boils down to disposition as much as duty. She appreciates the balm and the benefit — to her, to us — of company. The world, after all, is a big and scary place. It’s best navigated with loved ones by your side.