Opinion: Kamala Harris’ Questions for Veep Candidates Revealed
We all know of the smart and dumb choices politicians have made over the decades. Two of the most brilliant choices were JFK choosing LBJ to help win Texas in 1960, and Abe Lincoln deciding to wear the stovepipe hat to the Gettysburg address instead of a hoodie.
And history is rife with the bad choices politicians have made: John Edwards celebrating “condom free Wednesday,” Dan Quayle not using spellcheck, Lincoln deciding to accept those free theater tickets.
So the stakes could not be higher for Vice President Kamala Harris, and she has made it clear she wants someone with whom she has chemistry, someone whom she likes, and who likes her. Bottom line: she has to quickly find the perfect mate from a trio of men she barely knows.
How does she ensure there will be real chemistry? The only way is by using the same process that has led to as many as 17 successful marriages over the last 10 years—speed dating.
When it comes to love and romance, speed dating experts recommend just one or two questions—and as we all know, experts on cable news and the internet have not been wrong on anything in decades. They’re the ones who guaranteed Hillary would win, that King Charles would forgive Harry and Meghan, and that Donald Trump was the most fit and stable person ever. However given the serious nature of choosing a veep nominee, any vetting team worth its salt would come up with five essential questions. And we at the Daily Beast have managed to get ahold of the FIVE ACTUAL QUESTIONS Harris asked the three finalists.
QUESTION 1
Do you support the federal reserve reducing the interest rate by a quarter point if the unemployment rate hits 5?
Asking this question is a no-brainer as clearly, the ticket needs to be aligned on economic policy.
QUESTION 2
Have you ever had sex with a couch?
Not a trick question, although there were those on MSNBC who raised the concern that the wrong answer could alienate the all-important 35- to 55-year-old, white male couch-sex voting bloc.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: We at the Daily Beast have never taken a formal position for or against those who have had sex with a couch, as long as it was consensual and the couch was over 18.)
QUESTION 3
True or False: The Axis of Evil is Iran, North Korea and childless cat ladies.
Note the critical intersection here of foreign policy and pet preference.
QUESTION 4
Are you weird?
That is a hard question because there are different levels of weird. There is the “good” weird that describes the kid in high school computer class who never had a date and ended up running a billion-dollar Silicon Valley startup and now all the women who turned him down are looking at their unemployed husbands sitting there in their boxer shorts watching the Olympics and booing countries that end in the word “stan” and saying to themselves, “would an all-female jury convict me?” And then there’s the other type of weird and we all know that when we see it.
QUESTION 5
What had more impact, the break-up of the Soviet Union or the break-up of Hall and Oates?
So as the world waits, the Harris team is making its final decision. Luckily this speed-dating process guarantees the right vice presidential choice will be made. And once the wisdom of these five questions in that choice becomes apparent, we at the Daily Beast hope that the thousands of you heading to the Empire Room at the local Holiday Inn tonight for another fruitless speed-dating singles night will use them to guide your search for that special someone instead of asking, “What brings you here?” and “Do you like my Backstreet Boys face tattoo?”
Jon Macks is a comedy writer, speechwriter and award show writer who continues his work as a political consultant/debate prep consultant for Democratic candidates for United States Senate, Governor and President. He is a 10-time Emmy nominee and a two-time Writers Guild Award winner who writes for a number of entertainers and comics, among them Chris Rock, Steve Martin, Martin Short, Jay Leno and Billy Crystal. He is an executive producer of the upcoming James Carville documentary and an adviser to a number of CEOs on using humor in their remarks.
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