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?