Kamala Harris’s Very Bad Trip South

Kamala Harris was not happy about being publicly associated with the Mexican border, and after her disastrous interview with NBC’s Lester Holt and her flailing trip to Mexico and Guatemala, we can see why she would be generally leery of public-facing responsibilities. The entire excursion was a fiasco in just about every possible way, even down to her plane having to turn around and return to Andrews Air Force Base half an hour into its flight. Harris may be comfortable as a partisan attack dog and a historic symbol, but everyone involved will likely think twice before giving her another real job.

Harris has never handled criticism or probing questions well, even by the prickly standards of politicians. She tends to react with a combination of scorn and bizarrely out-of-place laughter when asked questions that she does not want to answer. It has never been clear if the laughter is an involuntary, nervous defense mechanism, a gesture of contempt, or some sort of deliberate strategy to soften the blow of a non-answer, but it invariably backfires.