Kamala Harris and those word salads: She can roll it, slice it, mash it, and dice it. I’m talking about Vice President Kamala Harris’ trademark word salads. Harris can serve up a heaping helping of repetitive nonsensical statements, where she starts in a circle and ends in a circle, trapped in murky rhetoric that is laughably obtuse. She has a tremendous grasp of the obvious, but articulating nuanced and complex thoughts?
Not so much. It gives people pause to contemplate a vice president saddled with subpar communication skills. This is a person who could well become the president. Do her struggles mean she also has a hazy capacity to make tough decisions in a timely manner during crises?
Let’s look at some of these word salads that the vice president simply cannot avoid.
The Audience Wants Her to Speak Well
Recently Harris was speaking about abortion at Howard University. This speech was in front of the friendliest of audiences — the vice president graduated from Howard and is viewed there as a hero. She should not feel the kind of pressure that would lead a speaker to succumb to a word salad. But alas, she did, and it might have been one of the worst jumbles yet.
“So, I think it’s very important, as you have heard from so many incredible leaders for us at every moment in time and certainly this one, to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future,” Harris said.
Wait. What did she just say? If this were a term paper and I happened to be grading it (I’m a part-time professor), I would get out the red pen and strike every single word of this statement.
What is amazing about this word salad is that it is a single, drawn-out sentence of painful syntax and clauses resulting in nothing notable or memorable. Please remove this from your speech, Madam Vice President. But that is just it. This sentence may not have been in the speech in the first place. No speech writer worth their salt would write this. That means she comes up with the world salads herself by riffing, changing, and ad libbing on her prepared remarks while on the fly.
Here’s another.
“The significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So, when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time.” This was in March of 2022 when she spoke about the need for broadband Internet in rural communities in Louisiana – which is a “significant” issue, according to Harris.
Or this gem.
“So, during Women’s History Month, we celebrate, and we honor the women who made history throughout history, who saw what could be unburdened by what had been.”
Uh. Ok. She’s talking about history, in case you didn’t notice.
Here’s one of my favorites, from when she addressed a group at the White House, including the Jamaican prime minister, about the Covid pandemic in that country. Get ready to take some Tylenol, because this is going to hurt your brain.
“We also recognize just as it has been in the United States, for Jamaica, one of the issues that has been presented as an issue that is economic in the way of its impact has been the pandemic,” Harris said. “So, to that end, we are announcing today also that we will assist Jamaica in COVID recovery by assisting in terms of the recovery efforts in Jamaica that have been essential to, I believe, what is necessary to strengthen not only the issue of public health but also the economy.”
You get the idea, and I thank the National Review for compiling this list of word salads. They included seven other examples that I won’t share in this article.
I’ve defended Harris before many times. She has potential, I’ve said. She has turned the corner, I’ve explained. She has at times sounded articulate, I’ve argued.
But the word salads keep coming. The White House doesn’t seem to care. They put her out there repeatedly for the world to see. She is definitely still on the presidential ticket and was featured prominently in the president’s re-election video, although she didn’t say anything audible in the 13 times she appeared.
Kamala Harris: How Can She Fix This Problem?
The only remedy I see would be to take a compilation of the word salads and show them to her. Then go back to speechmaking 101 and have her study and practice a speech repeatedly before delivery. She could edit the phrases she doesn’t like and add the words that she prefers. Then read the entire speech to the public without ad libbing. Somehow she hasn’t been able to do that. This has been going on for two years, with no end in sight.
Harris may be talented with an enviable resume, but she continues to stumble when addressing the public. We will just have to get used to her style of communication and let the chips fall where they may. Until then, expect more slicing and dicing of the word salads. She could become president someday. Her communication style would feature prominently, and more voters would notice how she sometimes doesn’t make any sense. Let’s hope that doesn’t come any time soon.
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Author Expertise and Experience
Serving as 19FortyFive’s Defense and National Security Editor, Dr. Brent M. Eastwood is the author of Humans, Machines, and Data: Future Trends in Warfare. He is an Emerging Threats expert and former U.S. Army Infantry officer. You can follow him on Twitter @BMEastwood. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and Foreign Policy/ International Relations.
