CNN’s interview with Vice President Harris and her running mate, Governor Walz, makes one wonder, “Where’s the beef?” Expect the brief chat to leave the voters and the press demanding more answers before entrusting them with the White House. 

“You give us 22 minutes,” 1010 WINS news-radio’s slogan promises, “and we’ll give you the world.” After over a month as a candidate, Ms. Harris gave the nation just 22 minutes on policy — the length of a typical sitcom episode and just as glib.

CNN’s chief political correspondent, Dana Bash, spent the remaining five minutes on personal stories about how President Biden broke the news that he was withdrawing and warm memories of the Democratic convention. These elicited anecdotes — Ms. Harris was making pancakes when she got the call — better suited to puff profiles, not the maiden interview for leader of the world.

Although CNN ran a “live” banner throughout, the interview was pre-taped, relieving pressure on the candidates. Having hosted both live radio and recorded interviews, I can attest that there’s an ease in knowing you’ll be edited later. This wasn’t a tough test or much of a test at all.

Ms. Bash met the obligation to ask the obvious questions, but she didn’t try to knock either candidate off their canned answers by digging into their records. Ms. Harris was expected to answer for disavowing so many of her past positions which, the Hill reports, ranked her as “the second-most liberal Democratic senator” this century.

When Ms. Bash asked Ms. Harris if voters “should … feel comfortable and confident that what you’re saying now is going to be your policy moving forward,” the vice president was ready to confront it in a novel way. Acknowledging flips on fracking and the border, she said, “my values have not changed.”  

In a 161-word response, Ms. Harris said “values” five times. Yet never did she elaborate on just what those values are. Likewise, when she said that on day one she’d take steps to “strengthen the middle class,” specifics were scarce. Extending the child tax credit and offering $25,000 to first-time homebuyers were as close as she came.

Ms. Harris claimed to have “laid out a number of proposals,” but where? Her campaign website is only a pitch for donations. Not a single word on policy. Like the Artful Dodger, a pickpocket in “Oliver Twist,” she avoided being caught as she might have been in a less deferential interview.

“The steps you’re talking about now,” Ms. Bash asked, “why haven’t you done them already?” Ms. Harris responded that anything she hasn’t done was because of the situation inherited from Trump. She then pointed out that inflation had fallen to “less than three percent,” as if it hadn’t been almost flat when she took office.

Of Israel, Ms. Harris said, “We have to get a deal done” for a two-state solution and condemned the atrocities of October 7th without mentioning Hamas. “Israel has a right to defend itself,” but “how it does so matters.” She pushed a ceasefire — ignoring that Hamas broke one the Biden-Harris administration announced just months before the attack — and added a platitude that “the war must end.”

Ms. Bash, noting that “a lot of Republican speakers” were featured at the Democratic convention, asked if Ms. Harris would appoint one to her cabinet. The vice president agreed to do so. “It would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my cabinet who was a Republican.”

The verb tense jumped out — not “is” a Republican, “was” — and she demurred when asked for names. It struck a bipartisan note, but as appointing a member of the opposition party is a tradition, the pledge was just more ticks off the clock. Much time was wasted on similar topics of little importance. 

That Ms. Harris insisted on bringing Mr. Walz along helped cool the hot seat for her comfort. On Tuesday, a CNN contributor, Scott Jennings,  and former assistant to President George W. Bush, described the format as “weak sauce” that showed a “troubling lack of confidence in her political ability.”

Also on Tuesday, a Democratic strategist on CNN, Julie Roginsky, called Ms. Harris’s press-avoidance an “unforced error.” A CNN anchor, Kasie Hunt, predicted that the “softball interview” would not “put this to rest,” meaning concerns that the ticket is trying to dodge proper grilling and run out the clock.

Ms. Bash did ask if Ms. Harris “had any regrets” over her staunch defense of Mr. Biden’s ability to serve a second term when the debate exposed this as untrue. The vice president said she was “so proud” of serving under the president and shifted to comparing him to President Trump, who she blamed for the border crisis.

Mr. Walz, who Ms. Bash said the nation is “just starting to get to know,” was first prompted to monologue about his life. More minutes lost. Next, he was asked if he “misspoke” saying he’d “carried weapons in war,” although he never saw combat. He said his “grammar is not always correct.” Another original defense.

Ms. Bash also asked about Mr. Walz’s claim he had used IVF to conceive his children when he did not and how his congressional “campaign repeatedly made false statements about a 1995 arrest for drunk and reckless driving.” Mr. Walz said, “I think people know who I am; they know that record,” ignoring that he’d cast it in a disingenuous light.

Now it’s up to the press and the people to demand more, harder-hitting interviews — live and unedited. If the ticket keeps dodging, voters will be left with their own question to answer: If a candidate gives you just 22 minutes, should you give them the world?