Leubsdorf: Crucial test for Harris

She has done so in such a sure-footed and dramatic manner that, in just more than a month, she has pulled slightly ahead of Trump in both national polls and enough swing states to have a reasonable chance of victory.

But Harris remains a lesser-known figure than the former president, who is leading the Republican ticket for the third straight election. Anecdotal evidence from interviews and some focus groups indicates some potential Harris supporters are hesitant to back her until they know more about what she would do as president.

In a sense, the vice president’s situation resembles those faced in the past by candidates about whom many voters were uncertain against better-known foes — notably John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.

When Kennedy met Richard Nixon in the first television presidential debate in 1960, the 43-year-old Massachusetts senator was less well known than his Republican rival, who had become a familiar figure during his eight years as Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president.

In his opening statement of an encounter that was supposed to be confined to domestic issues, Kennedy invoked the country’s Cold War competition against the Soviet Union, cited statistics on how the U.S. was lagging in producing engineers and scientists and concluded with his campaign theme that “It’s time America started moving again.”

Though analysts rated their four encounters as roughly even, that opening statement gave Kennedy the momentum that narrowly propelled him into the presidency.

In 1980, Reagan and President Jimmy Carter held their only debate a week before the election. Reagan succeeded with humorous rejoinders and a dynamite closing line in which he urged voters to ask themselves, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Voters answered that with a resounding “No.” Reagan won by 10 points.

In 2008, Obama, though a relatively new national figure, was the favorite as retiring two-term Republican incumbent George W. Bush struggled to manage an unsuccessful foreign war in Iraq and a domestic financial crisis. Obama looked more surefooted than Arizona Sen. John McCain in his approach to the economic crisis, and his strong first debate performance put him ahead to stay.

In all three cases, the lesser-known candidate from the nonincumbent party won. Harris’ situation is different because she is the lesser-known nominee of the incumbent party. She needs to convince voters she would be a steady hand at the nation’s tiller and remind them why they sent Trump packing after just four years.

In Trump, she is facing an experienced debate performer. The former president’s June clash with Biden was his sixth general election debate over the last three campaigns, and he participated in a dozen GOP encounters in 2016.

Though this will be her first general election presidential debate, Harris is no novice. Debates played an important role in her two elections as California’s attorney general, and she had a strong performance in the 2020 vice presidential debate with incumbent Republican Mike Pence. In a possible preview of how she might react to Trump, she stopped Pence at one point from interrupting her by declaring, “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking.”

The way she handles Trump — and the resulting impression on the small number of uncertain voters — will likely go a long way toward determining if Harris can prevent the former president’s return to the Oval Office.