JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION!

Personally, I love questions. Good questions means that people are thinking—and great questions opens up new venues for new discoveries. And when I know the answers to deeply felt questions, I love providing those answers. I’ve studied and researched for years to be able to do that, and if it enriches the minds and lives of those asking—then it’s fantastic. And when I don’t know an answer, I just say, “I don’t know but I will find out.” That would then put me on the search for the answers.

But apparently, Kamala Harris does not like to answer questions. She does seem skilled at memorizing certain lines and repeated them over and over—lines that say nothing and convey no actual information. This became clear in the recent interview this week.

When Bret Baier interview Kamala Harris on Wednesday he began by asking “How many illegal immigrants do you estimate have entered the US during your tenure as vice president?” Instead of answering the question, she said, “I’m glad you asked that question; that’s a questions that lots of people want to have a conversation about ... “ etc. Now if someone asked me, “How long have you been in NLP?” I would not say, “I’m glad you asked that question; that’s a question that lots of people would like to have a conversation about...” and then go on to talk about something else. Instead I would say, “Since 1985, so 39 years.” The only thing that Harris demonstrated was her ability to talk in such empty glittering generalities.

Throughout the interview I kept thinking, “Just answer the question!” But she did not. Time and time again, she deflected from the topic Baier brought up and never got around to answering the question. Now why would someone do that? What’s wrong with someone, especially who wants to be a leader, who simply does not answer a question? It makes us wonder, What is the person hiding? What is the person afraid of? So why would a person not answer a question? Here are some possibilities.

1) The person does not know the answer.

2) The person does not want to answer because it would embarrass him or her.

3) The person feels that she would be ‘out-of-control’ if she follows the questioning of another person and from a strong-will perceptive has to resist.

4) The person thinks that an interview is a game of winners and losers and to answer allows the other person to ‘win.’

5) The person only knows how to speak in terms of glittering generalities and is simply unable to speak in specifics.

6) The person thinks that people can be duped by generalities and that she can distract people by lots of talk (filibusting) that moves the conversation away from the subject of the question.

7) The person refuses to be held accountable for her own behavior or for what the Binden/ Harris administration did and is doing.

Whatever her reason, she was excellent at not answer the questions and trying to deflect attention away from herself. She did that by constantly attacking Donald Trump; in 25 minutes she mentioned him 113 times(!). But sadly that is the old fallacious thinking error called ad hominen which means “to the person.” It is used when someone wants to attack someone’s reasoning and argument, but cannot do it, so they attack the person. [I wrote about fallacious thinking in Executive Thinking, 2018.]

Once after speaking about her psychological abilities to read Trump and see him as unstable, she was asked about her perceptions of Joe Binden and the months (or years) of his mental decline. She immediately said that Binden is not on the ticket. and while that is true, her judgments and evaluations are on the ticket. Could she not see Binden’s decline? If so, why did she never speak of it? Why did she speak up constantly saying that he was sharp as a tack and could run circles around others? Otherwise if she did not, what makes her able to do it now with Trump?

Personally I think the interview was a total shipwreck for Harris. It was suppose to let her present her positions about what she would do to make things better. But instead of that, she never talked about her program, she only talked about her criticisms of Trump. And given that to this day she has not held a single Press Conference and only done friendly interviews, with this first serious interview, she completely failed to handle things and, in fact, got pretty angry.

In terms of thinking and communicating, it was a good example of how a person can say a lot and convey nearly no information. Someone should offer her some training in NLP!