Why is Kamala Harris bringing Tim Walz to her first major interview?

Three weeks ago, just days after being formally chosen as the Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris was pressed on her plans for a sit-down interview.

“I’ve talked to my team,” she told reporters on the airport tarmac in Detroit. “I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month.”

On Thursday night, Ms Harris will – just barely – make good on that promise, sitting down with CNN’s Dana Bash for her first major interview.

But Ms Harris will not be there by herself. The vice-president will be joined by her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, for the prime-time appearance, airing at 21:00 EDT (02:00 BST).

Ms Harris may have answered the question of when she would conduct an in-depth, substantive discussion of her candidacy and agenda – standard procedure for all major party presidential candidates.

But with Mr Walz in tow, the decision to make this a joint appearance may also fuel growing criticism that after escaping the rigours of a months-long presidential primary, she is now dodging the scrutiny that comes with a solo interview.

“I think it’s incredibly weak, weak sauce, to show up with your running mate,” said Scott Jennings, a former special assistant to President George W Bush, on CNN, adding that Harris had a “troubling lack of confidence” in her own political ability.

Still, supporters of Ms Harris insist that given the unprecedented nature of her candidacy following President Joe Biden’s sudden departure from the race, she is taking things at a smart pace.

“I think the cadence has been right,” said Peter Giangreco, a Chicago-based Democratic strategist. “Win the nomination, pick your nominee, lay out your economic plan, do your convention and now do some sit-downs and amplify that.”

Joint interviews featuring both members of a presidential ticket are not unusual.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden sat for an interview with 60 minutes after Mr Biden was selected as the vice-presidential nominee in 2008. Eight years later, Hillary Clinton and her running mate Tim Kaine did the same. For Ms Harris and Mr Biden in 2020, they picked ABC’s 20/20. And less than a week after Trump announced JD Vance as his running mate, the pair were jointly interviewed on Fox.

But since Mr Biden passed the torch to her late last month, Ms Harris has limited most of her engagement with the press to scripted and highly-controlled environments. Her last formal sit-down interview was on 24 June, more than two months and a political lifetime ago.

Her occasional interactions with reporters – brief answers to shouted questions on her way to and from campaign events – have done little to quell Republican claims that she is shirking any opportunity to have her record and agenda put under the microscope.

The harshest criticism comes from her Republican opponents, who have both given several interviews in the past month.

“She’s not smart enough to do a news conference,” Mr Trump told media earlier in August. “She won’t do interviews with friendly people because she can’t do better than Biden.”

The Democratic nominee has enjoyed a surge in momentum since entering the race. Now, after her whirlwind introduction to American voters, she needs to “reinforce” that energy, said Republican strategist and Trump critic Chip Felkel.

“She’s gotta get out there,” he said. “She’s got to show that she can think under pressure, because that’s part of what the president has to do.”

Since she campaigned in the Democratic presidential primary in 2019, Ms Harris has switched her stance on several key policy positions, backing off some of her more liberal promises.

She has abandoned pledges to support Medicare for all (giving all Americans access to government-funded healthcare) and to ban fracking. And the vice-president now supports a bipartisan border bill that includes hundreds of millions of dollars on a border wall, something Ms Harris once called “un-American”.

These apparent changes could open her up to questions about being a policy flip-flopper – an unwelcome label for a candidate still trying to define herself.

But by doing a joint interview, the Harris campaign may have calculated that the pressure – and the difficult questions – will at least be shared between the two of them. And it ensures both are in lockstep when it comes to explaining policy.

Mr Giangreco, the Democratic strategist, predicted Ms Harris and Mr Walz will try to turn the focus onto their economic plan, an agenda to lower the cost of living and provide economic security that she first announced at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, two weeks ago.

Mr Giangreco also pointed to another potential benefit of a joint interview: drawing a contrast between Mr Walz and his Republican counterpart JD Vance who he has labelled as “weird”.

Still, the real impact of Ms Harris and Mr Walz’s sit-down won’t be known until it is done.

Ms Harris’s record with high-pressure interviews is mixed. A 2021 conversation with NBC’s Lester Holt, in which she fumbled through questions about her role in the administration’s border policy, was widely regarded as a failure.

But in a more recent appearance, a one-on-one with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, in which she defended Mr Biden’s calamitous debate performance, Ms Harris looked calm and confident amid a political firestorm.

If this high-stakes CNN joint interview falls into the latter category, then the Harris campaign will hope much of the criticism will fall away, said Mr Felkel, the Republican strategist.

“They just need to be able to say ‘See, we told you,’” he said. “And then keep moving.”