What do you remember from the last time Kamala Harris was on a televised debate? I’m gonna guess it wasn’t her policy ideas.
The morning after the 2020 Vice-Presidential debates, “I’m speaking” was trending, along with memes about the fly lounging around on Mike Pence’s head.
Going into any debate, no one knows what’s gonna stick out in viewer’s memories. The chances are very good, however, that what people remember will have almost nothing to do with policy or fact-based arguments (despite debate prep often focusing exclusively on just that). Having been part of helping a candidate prepare for Canadian Leaders’ Debates, I’ve had a front-row ticket to that behind-the-scenes show.
Despite President Joe Biden’s abysmal performance in the first presidential debate of 2024 against Donald Trump, if you just read the transcripts you’d likely think that Biden made much more sense than Trump. He presented more facts on file and provided logical list after list of examples of his administration’s success, all that good information memorized in debate prep.
However, it did him no good. The only thing anyone remembers is his stilted, weak delivery. And for the 2020 VP debates, despite all the policy prep they went through, the candidates’ performances would be remembered for that fly on Mike Pence’s head and for Kamala Harris’ standing up for herself when interrupted.
How can this performance inform her for a presidential debate against Donald Trump? Well, that may depend on the rules of the debate.
Women across twitter celebrated Kamala Harris’ reaction to being interrupted in 2020, because they’d all been there. “This is the unfortunate reality for many professional women.” I celebrated too. However, for me—a cis, white, hetero, confrontation-averse, polite Canadian gal—it took me a second to get there.
I’m not proud to say that Kamala Harris’s repeated requests to regain the floor momentarily came across a bit negatively to Fragile Mary Houle (me), even though my logical brain knew that she was doing what needed to be done. I was only able to celebrate after using my sober-second-thought slow brain to see that she was being assertive, not aggressive: that Kamala Harris was doing what she had to do to make her point. Initially my fast brain judged. My peace-at-all-cost, good-student-of-the-patriarchy brain judged, even though I knew better. I’m not proud of it.
If you felt a bit uncomfortable, too, well, you’re also a good student of the patriarchy! Welcome! We are many! But, let’s you and I keep striving to override these damaging ways of seeing and being in the world, yeah? How about we let our sober-second-thought brains kick in? Judgy McJudgeface can continue to be reprogrammed, example after example. It’s the work we have to do as individuals if we want more underrepresented voices to be heard.
But there’s also work that a system can do even before getting to that point. The first 2020 VP debate was not designed well for female participants. Microphones were open the whole time, allowing for interruptions, and the moderators left it to the participants to request their time back.
Now, when a man is interrupted by another man, he can demand his turn back without negative judgement. He’ll look commanding or assertive, even confident! These are all good characteristics to see in a leader.
As linguist Deborah Tannen points out, “There’s a double bind for women – because anything you do to come across as a forceful candidate violates expectations for women.”
Many of our patriarchy-programmed brains think women are not supposed to be ‘forceful’. Re-programming will help, but there can still be an initial negative reaction.
Once interrupted, Kamala Harris had two choices. She could either:
A) be the demure, accommodating kind of woman that many people are comfortable with: the one who smooths things over, doesn’t ruffle feathers, keeps it all positive and civil. She could have let Pence take over the conversation and have his say, even though it was her turn. She could be that peace-loving, non-confrontational woman who is most often rewarded, but not given any power, in a patriarchal society.
Or
B) she could assert herself and gain the floor back (at the risk of violating societal expectations for women).
Well, Kamala Harris did not find herself in that chair that night by letting those around her take away her voice.
So she asserted herself.
Many celebrated! Some judged. (Some, like me, quietly judged then celebrated.) For those who judged, there is a cost to that interruption that Harris paid, but not Pence.
And there are more costs than just that.
The Many Costs of Interruptions
Having to explicitly request your turn back points out to the audience that you have not been afforded respect. When someone has to tell their conversation partner not to interrupt them, or assert “I’m speaking”, it highlights the fact that their turn was taken away, they weren’t respected. There’s a cost for having to explicitly ask for respect.
Interruptions also take a speaker out of the game for a second. Whatever point they were in the middle of making, they have to momentarily abandon to deal with the meta-conversational task of gaining back the floor. They can lose their train of thought.
On top of that, they may have to manage any emotion that might have surfaced after being interrupted. In the 2020 debate, Kamala Harris had to push that emotion down. Otherwise she would risk looking—oh I don’t know—all that. So she’d smile and say, “I’m speaking” to get her turn back. She had to manage her emotions in a way that Mike Pence didn’t.
Once regaining the floor, she then had to return to her initial thought that had been interrupted. Having lost the flow, the strength of her point was then greatly diminished, if she managed to find it again at all. That night, sometimes she didn’t find her point again. It was still a masterful performance, but just imagine if she didn’t have to spend all those words defending her time.
The costs of interruptions are great, and that night Kamala Harris had to pay a price twice as high as Pence did.
How can the ‘System’ Help?
When I first wrote about this back in 2020, I suggested that the debate organizers either cut the other microphone when each speaker takes their turn, or that the moderator step in to give Kamala Harris her time back, without her having to ask. That’s exactly what they did for the subsequent presidential debates.
I wrote that we could argue about whether Harris demanding her turn is rude or simply assertive, but why does she have to demand it at all? Why should she be even be put in that position twice as often as her debating partner? They solved for that by designing a debate with microphones turned off when it wasn’t a speaker’s turn. That is a good system response. That is progress!
What can I Do?
Managing interruptions goes beyond just formal presidential debates. If a woman is speaking in the board room—or in a Zoom room, at a town hall, at a dining room table—the rest of us can just button it for half a minute and let her finish. Women are often the ones who have been socialized to be the ‘good listeners’, creating space for those around them to share, but listening is a skill that can be learned later in life. More progress! We can start with just simply not talking every time we get the urge. Create a space of silence, affording the ‘good listeners’ a chance to have their say, too.
And when you see someone who isn’t getting her turn or who is interrupted, don’t just stand by and watch. Step in on her behalf.
“Excuse me, she’s speaking” never looked bad on anyone.
Suggestion for the Next Presidential Debate
As of right now, Trump’s campaign team is, surprisingly, requesting that the micophones be muted when it’s not their turn. I would have thought Trump wouldn’t want that, since he’s such an interrupter. Yes, Donald Trump is guilty of being a serial interrupter (among other crimes, ba-doom tish!), but in the first presidential debate, it did not disadvantage him against Biden to have his microphone silenced. Trump didn’t need to do anything to throw Biden off his game. Biden managed that just fine all on his own.
That won’t be the case with Kamala Harris. She’ll hold her own. So why does the Trump team want closed microphones? One theory is that “they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own” and that Harris’s team believes “that Harris can get Trump to lose his cool and say something impolitic on mic.
‘She’s more than happy to have exchanges with him if he tries to interrupt her…And given how shook he seems by her, he’s very prone to having intemperate outbursts and … I think the campaign would want viewers to hear [that].’”
But I don’t think they’re considering the double bind. If the microphones are kept open in the debate, Kamala Harris will face that double bind, being forced to take back her turn so very many times (Trump interrupted Biden 72 times in 2020), with all the costs associated with that (losing train of thought, pointing out that she,s not been respeted). If that’s the case, she’ll have to masterfully navigate that fine line between getting her say and facing the double bind. Her “I’m speaking” worked pretty well last time, but she’ll be juggling a lot more than Trump.
Maybe she can take inspiration from Senator Maxine Waters and simply state she is “Reclaiming her time” on each interruption.
My brilliant partner and I were discussing it last night. A former videographer for Canada’s Prime Minister, he suggested that Kamala Harris announce ahead of time that she’ll be counting out loud how many times Donald Trump interrupts her, unemotionally stating “That’s one interruption”, “That’s two” … “Seventy-three”, “Seventy-four” before returning to her point. It’s not a judgment. It’s just a number.
I kinda like it.
What do you think she should do?