Was 'Harris With The Glock' The New 'Dukakis in the Tank'?

Authored by Shane Harris via RealClearPolitics,

Vice President Kamala Harris’ comments about owning a “Glock” are proving to be, more than just a short-lived embarrassment, a microcosm of the problem plaguing her candidacy. Like other failed campaigns before, Harris’ camp seems to believe the public can be hoodwinked with prepared lines and ads and images that are at odds with the candidate’s record and identity.

“Tim Walz and I are both gun owners,” Harris said on stage in Philadelphia last month during her debate with Donald Trump. “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away.”

It was one of the more discordant remarks Harris has made throughout her short-lived campaign, and inadvertently highlighted her record of hostility toward gun owners and the Second Amendment. Harris has supported bans of popular firearms which she calls “assault weapons,” praised Australia’s gun grabs, and signed on to a Supreme Court brief which argued that the Second Amendment protects only a “collective” or “militia-related” right to bear arms – and not an individual right.

To many political observers, this transparent attempt to appeal to gun owners after her long history of anti-Second Amendment advocacy smacked of desperation. For some, it evoked memories of an infamous 2004 John Kerry campaign photo op which showed the Democrat nominee dressed in camo emerging from an Ohio cornfield with a double-barreled shotgun, supposedly just wrapping up a goose hunt. Kerry knew firearms – he’d served in combat – but the image felt utterly contrived.

Perhaps the most famous instance of a candidate pretending to be something he wasn’t and thinking a clever photo op would solve a terminal problem with his campaign was Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis in 1988. Dukakis, then governor of Massachusetts, wanted to run on the Bay State’s economic resurgence – the “Massachusetts miracle,” he called it. The George H.W. Bush campaign had other ideas, producing a series of withering negative ads attacking Dukakis for his policy as governor allowing “weekend passes” for convicted murderers, his association with the ACLU, and his perceived weakness on national defense. In response, the Dukakis campaign tried to show their man’s toughness by orchestrating a photo op of him riding in an M1 Abrams tank.

It didn’t look authentic, and the image went viral before viral was a thing. Dukakis contributed a major laugher to the history of presidential campaigns. To this day the photo is regarded as one of the most consequential unforced errors in presidential campaign history.

Is Harris maybe facing her own “Dukakis in the tank” moment? Following her debate with Donald Trump, she insisted on doubling and tripling down on her gun comment, displaying a complete inability to read the room.

The first follow-up came a little over a week after the debate when Harris told Oprah Winfrey, “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot,” a jarring declaration she punctuated with one of her infamous cackles. Then came the awkward moment on CBS’ “60 Minutes” when the vice president said specifically that she owns a “Glock” and has “had it for quite some time.”

Were it not for those two subsequent comments, Harris’ initial debate remark might’ve faded away after some mild ribbing from conservatives.

So now Harris has created an even bigger headache for herself, namely because she has supported policies which would not only outlaw handgun ownership, but ban Glocks specifically. In 2005, Harris backed a San Francisco measure that would’ve outlawed handguns in the city; her 2008 Supreme Court brief in D.C. v. Heller explicitly argued that the Second Amendment does not protect the right of private citizens to use handguns for home self-defense – exactly what Harris told Oprah she has a gun for. Most Glocks also have what Harris would consider a “high-capacity magazine” (10 rounds), which she has forcefully called for banning.

In the end, Harris turned what should’ve been only a mildly embarrassing moment into a classic self-own. But missteps such as these aren’t aberrations, they are indicative of a deeper problem in a national campaign.

As Mike Dukakis later said himself about the notorious tank photo-op, “That didn't beat me. If we had run a decent national campaign, that wouldn't have had any effect.”

Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. His work regularly appears on AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.