Anti-Trump columnist says Harris hasn't earned his support yet: 'Widespread perception of unseriousness'

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens is staunchly anti-Trump but said he isn't sold on voting for Vice President Kamala Harris yet, saying she can no longer afford to dodge giving specific answers to media questions.

"If, as president, she had intelligence that Iran was on the cusp of assembling a nuclear weapon, would she use force to stop it? Are there limits to American support for Ukraine, and what are they?" Stephens asked in an opinion piece from Tuesday, also listing difficult questions about the creation of a "Palestinian state," the housing crisis, and the possible role of "nuclear power in her energy and climate plans."

Stephens criticized Harris for her "lighter than air" answers to questions in interviews with CNN reporter Dana Bash and 6ABC's Brian Taff, in his piece headlined, "What Harris must do to win over skeptics (like me)."

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New York Times columnist Bret Stephens argued in a recent op-ed that Vice President Kamala Harris can no longer afford to dodge serious answers from the press about the war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, nuclear energy and other important issues.  (Getty Images)

"It may be that Harris has thoughtful answers to these sorts of questions," Stephens wrote. "If so, she isn’t letting on." 

Harris has gone 59 days as the presumptive, and now, official Democratic nominee for president without holding an official press conference. She's started to step up her interviews, sitting with the National Association of Black Journalists on Tuesday in Philadelphia.

"All this helps explain my unease with the thought of voting for Harris — an unease I never felt, despite policy differences, when Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were on the ballot against Trump," Stephens wrote. "If Harris can answer the sorts of questions I posed above, she should be quick to do so, if only to dispel a widespread perception of unseriousness. If she can’t, then what was she doing over nearly eight years as a senator and vice president?"

"Illiberal populism has taken root in response to well-founded perceptions of elite incompetence, highhandedness and self-dealing," Stephens continued. "Does Harris have anything to offer disaffected voters, or does she merely embody the elitist perspective that they despise?"

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Former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images.)

The columnist said that Harris cannot hide behind the "all-purpose response" that former President Trump is an "existential threat" to democratic institutions that her campaign has often relied on.

"But: Trump," he wrote. "That’s the all-purpose response for many voters to any doubts about Harris’s qualifications." 

"It should not be hard for Harris to demonstrate that she can give detailed answers to urgent policy questions," Stephens wrote. "Or to express a sense, beyond a few canned phrases, of how she sees the American interest in a darkening world. Or to articulate a politics of genuine inclusion that reaches out to tens of millions of distrustful voters. Or to prove that she’s more than another factory-settings liberal Democrat whose greatest virtue, like her greatest fault, is that she won’t step too far from the conventional wisdom."

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

Fox News' Brian Flood and David Rutz contributed to this report. 

Jeffrey Clark is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. He has previously served as a speechwriter for a cabinet secretary and as a Fulbright teacher in South Korea. Jeffrey graduated from the University of Iowa in 2019 with a degree in English and History. 

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