With Harris as its candidate, the mainstream media is "off to the races."

Here are two recent headlines from the Washington Post (paper edition): (1) “Harris team raced to flip entire script of campaign” and (2) “Reporters are energized by remade 2024 election cycle.”

To me, the second headlines represents an admission that the mainstream media was too glum to put much energy into election coverage when the candidate it favored seemed destined to lose. Now, newly energized MSM reporters are helping the Harris team “flip the script.”

The Post quotes chief ABC News White House correspondent Mary Bruce who says, “It’s a whole new ballgame and now we’re off to the races.” They are, indeed, with a series of puff pieces about Harris and non-stop attacks on JD Vance.

Harris was the junior partner in the Biden-Harris team. Thus, her elevation to the top of the partnership shouldn’t flip the basic script of this election — that it’s mainly a referendum on Biden’s policies and outcomes. Nor should her elevation have flipped the part of the script, previously written by the mainstream media, that Harris has stumbled as vice president.

Granted, the script has flipped in the sense that the Democrats are no longer running a candidate whose age has rendered him unable to perform the job of president. But they are running someone who strongly vouched for that candidate’s acuity.

This, though, is not the script our “energized” mainstream media is presenting. Instead, the new script is the one that Harris’ team is selling. In that script, Harris isn’t a cackling stumblebum. She’s a star. And those stories about Harris’ lackluster performance as vice president and the fact that her staffers have quit in droves? They were founded on racism and sexism.

Thus, the New York Times treats us to this fawning tribute to Harris under the laughable headline (in paper edition), “A global reputation for steely resolve and deft diplomacy.” I wonder whether even the average New York Times reader takes this picture of Harris seriously.

The Times says its reporting is based on more than 30 interviews with officials on four continents including foreign heads of states, senior diplomats, and activists, all of whom “interacted with her.” The Times doesn’t say how many people it interviewed for the story, but let’s assume it interviewed “more than 30” — in other words that it talked to each interviewee only once. The Times also doesn’t say how many of the 30+ people were heads of states or even “senior diplomats.” And it doesn’t say how many of the 30+ people it interviewed spoke glowingly, or even positively, about Harris.

It wouldn’t be surprising, though, if the Times found 30 leaders or staffers who had good things to say about Harris. According to the Times, Harris has met with more than 150 “world leaders.” When we consider that (1) some foreign leaders don’t want Trump to win and (2) all of them want to be on good terms with Harris if she wins, we shouldn’t take the Times’ head count as signifying anything real.

The Times highlights Harris’ role in U.S. relations with Guatemala. We’re told that Harris took the lead in shoring up that nation’s democracy by sending “strong messages” to former president Alejandro Giammattei that he must respect Guatemala’s election results. This was coupled with the imposition by the State Department of visa restrictions on certain Guatemala politicians.

In the end, the election of Gianmettei’s rival, Bernardo Arévalo, was affirmed and he took office.

I find it interesting that the Washington Post’s report on these events when Arévalo took office earlier this year makes no mention of Harris. Instead, it credits “the determination of Guatemalan citizens” and “U.S. bureaucrats with decades of experience in Latin America.”

But this was before the mainstream media was “off to the races” on Harris’ behalf.

Even if Harris played a key role in facing down the former president of Guatemala, this is a very thin reed on which to base a claim that Harris is a steely, formidable foreign policy player. I doubt that Gianmettei’s failure to overturn the election has Putin, Xi, or even Hamas and Hezbollah quaking in their boots.

And let’s not forget that the big picture of Harris’ dealings with central America is one of failure. As the point person (we’re no longer supposed to say czar) of Biden’s border policy, Harris’ remit (ostensibly) was to stem the flow of illegal immigrants across our southern border. Like any good liberal, she addressed the issue not by dealing directly with the problem at hand, but by addressing its alleged “root causes” — in this case poverty and oppression in central America.

By contrast, Donald Trump addressed illegal immigration by brow-beating central American leaders into toughening up their immigration-related policies. That’s the kind of “steeliness” and “deftness” that produces results.

There is no evidence that Harris has made progress in her fool’s errand of improving life in central America. Arévalo appears to be making no headway in Guatemala — as if much could be made there in the foreseeable future.

Elsewhere, Harris has left no foreign policy footprint to speak of. This puff piece touts her “embrace of a global outlook” as “a daughter of immigrants who spent part of her childhood in Canada.” As for actual accomplishments, the article comes up empty. Lots of trips to foreign countries. Lots of appearances at “summits.” Lots of tough talk criticizing Israel. But nothing to show for it.

I’m no fan of Donald Trump. But if I ask myself which of the two presidential candidates would be better able to handle foreign leaders like Netanyahu, Xi, Putin, or even Guatemala’s Arévalo, the answer isn’t Kamala Harris.