Friday, 20 December 2024
Friday, 20 December 2024
They both walked into the lion’s lair by choice; she emerged unscathed, he was eaten alive.
Kamala Harris did a Rahul Gandhi this week when she sat down for an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier three weeks before the US presidential election – just as the Congress scion had faced Arnab Goswami, then with Times Now, 10 years ago right before the Lok Sabha polls.
Both Baier’s show now and Arnab’s show then were events by themselves. Both anchors were combative, going for the jugular. Baier is no Tucker Carlson – forget Goswami – but he repeatedly interrupted Harris, often heckling more than seeking answers.
“For a Democratic presidential candidate, appearing on Fox News is about as close as going into the lion’s den as it gets. On Wednesday, the lion was Mr. Baier, who repeatedly interrupted the vice president and tried to talk over her,” The New York Times wrote.
Since then, the liberal US media has been all praise for Harris. Even the conservatives have not found much ammunition against her, evidenced from the muted response in publications like The Wall Street Journal.
Rahul Gandhi’s interview with Arnab Goswami had massacred the Congress leader’s public image.
Baier tried to pin Harris down on right-wing pet peeves – like illegal immigration, her past advocacy of things like allowing taxpayer money to be used for gender-change operations for prisoners, and the mental condition of President Joe Biden.
How did Harris deal with each of these contentious issues?
Baier played a video of the mother of a 12-year-old girl murdered in Texas and asked if Harris wanted to apologise to the families of women killed by illegal immigrants.
Harris did not flinch, did not vacillate; “I will tell you that I am so sorry for her loss. I am so sorry for her loss, sincerely, ” she said.
But she took the attack to Donald Trump: “But let’s talk about what is happening right now with an individual [Trump] who does not want to participate in solutions. Let’s talk about that as well, in all fairness.”
When Baier repeatedly interrupted here, she firmly put him on the mat – almost like a stern schoolteacher dealing with an errant child.
And she flipped the attack on transgender surgeries by saying that she would follow the law, and that the Donald Trump administration had also not changed that policy.
Harris was candid when asked about America’s immigration mess.
She said, “We’ve had a broken immigration system transcending, by the way, Donald Trump’s administration, even before. Let’s all be honest about that. I have no pride, and saying that this is a perfect immigration system, I’ve been clear, I think we all are, that it needs to be fixed.”
When Baier asked if she thought Trump’s followers were stupid, Harris replied, “I would never say that about the American people.” But she followed it up with: “He [Trump] is unfit to serve, that he is unstable, that he is dangerous, and that people are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader who spends full time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances, and it being about him instead of the American people.”
She repeatedly underlined that she had a plan, a way forward.
And how did Rahul Gandhi handle Arnab Goswami? He was often rambling, deviating and trying to get across what he had prepared. Like a schoolboy trying to retrofit an essay he had prepared into the topic he had been given to write on.
“Gandhi was at turns confident and worryingly vague,” Time magazine wrote, “expressing some broad political goals like empowering women and opening the political system while coming up short on what, exactly, another term for Congress would look like as India gets ready to vote.”
Goswami asked him about his view on Narendra Modi and if he was afraid to lose against Modi. Rahul traipsed off into what kind of a person he was and how his personal history of losing his grandmother and father had shaped him.
Goswami pulled him back to the question, pointing out that Modi had called him a shehzada – a sharp jab at his privilege.
When asked about Congress’s strategy to criticise Modi on Gujarat riots, Gandhi spoke of women empowerment, RTI and NREGA.
“But by the time the interview reached the halfway stage, two things were clear – Rahul was unprepared on his biggest night out, and Goswami was directing the interview towards his predefined destination: Rahul’s annihilation,” Sanjay Jha, a former national spokesperson of the Congress, wrote about the interview in his book, The Great Unravelling: India After 2014.
“A well-meaning, sincere Rahul got ridiculed for sounding repetitive and appearing dodgy… Overnight, Modi had leapt a thousand miles closer to 7, Race Course Road.”
So what went wrong for Rahul and how did Kamala safeguard herself?
For that, be kind and rewind to early 2014. The Congress-led UPA II government was reeling with taints of alleged scams – 2G, Commonwealth, Aircel-Maxis… The party stood discredited because of these allegations and the flab accumulated from a decade in the seat of power.
Narendra Modi, whose image had taken a hit post the 2002 Gujarat riots, was looming large as the challenger who had been turned into a development icon – critics point to a certain lobbyist firm – and was armed with strategist Prashant Kishor and ad names like Piyush Pandey and Prasoon Joshi spinning out promo merch.
Along with slogans like “Ab ki baar, Modi sarkar (this time, Modi government), the narrative of Pappu (fool) and shehzada for Rahul Gandhi was transmitted ad nauseam.
But Gandhi, then 43, and a novice in politics – a year before his interview with Goswami, he tore his government’s ordnance and called it “complete nonsense” sitting right beside the prime minister – had no counter campaign against Arnab – or Modi.
His backroom boys, comprising people who, according to many critical reports were, ““only being good with computers,” couldn’t handle the narrative war.
The sheer length of the interview granted to Goswami was also foolhardy – nearly one-and-half hours.
Kamala Harris gave Fox News 26 minutes.
She was prepared for the attacks. When Baier tried to focus on illegal immigrants and crime, Harris repeatedly pointed out her past as a tough attorney general of a border state (California).
Rahul Gandhi also should have seen the attacks coming. But PM Modi and Arnab Goswami, who never forget to talk about a “Congress ecosystem”, could overpower Rahul Gandhi with their right-wing media ecosystem.
The Gandhi family, Rahul included, avoids the media at every stage of their career – the Arnab Goswami interview of the first such encounter Rahul Gandhi faced. Consequently, they are not trained in the art of media handling. They choose to speak with “safe” journalists – no matter how much Rahul Gandhi might aim pliant “journalist” barbs at those whom Modi gives interviews to.
In contrast, An American politician is exposed to unmanaged media at every stage of their career. They also prepare thoroughly and do their homework
And, of course, Rahul Gandhi was no Kamala Harris in 2014.
That was 10 years ago, though. Has Rahul Gandhi changed? Maybe the best attestation came from Smriti Irani earlier this year when she said that the Congress leader’s politics has grown learning from his mistakes.
