Vice President Kamala Harris' aversion to formal press conferences rests on a reasonable political premise: she doesn't have a teleprompter to provide answers, and she is not alone in using the teleprompter as a communications crutch.
The aspiring political class regards it as de rigueur to master the rolling words on the forty-five-degree mirror sitting on stanchions adjacent to the speaker. It is also a double-edged sword of the television age which on the one hand can transform dialogue to tens of millions of people into a living room conversation, while on the other converting an otherwise intimate setting into a mockery.
Spanning four decades, Joe Biden, as a U.S. senator, belonged to one of America's greatest American debating societies. Then, as president, was reduced to relying on teleprompter scripts that stripped him of authenticity — a dependency that may have contributed to descending cognition that gave us the debate babble of June 27.
More than once I've seen how his clinging to teleprompters reduced routine presidential ceremonies, and potentially warm occasions, into cold newsroom productions. As his number two, the vice president mimicked her benefactor's vulnerability to the rolling screen. Hence, it came as no surprise when she stumbled when faced with unexpected questions.
The larger issue for Harris, and also for former President Donald Trump, however, may lay in the forthcoming fall campaign when vote margins are decided by fractions.
Will either candidate restore the kind of political dialogue and connection with the American people that was achieved in years past, absent the artifice of the teleprompter?
The high standards for Harris are in the hall of fame of the great stump campaigners and orators of the Democratic party.
Former President Harry Truman campaigned from the back of a train with a few notes in front of him. As a teenager I watched former President John Kennedy speak extemporaneously during a Tulare, California whistle stop. And former Vice President Hubert Humphrey had no props in 1968 when he thundered across America before roaring crowds.
On the campaign trail, for himself or for others, former President Richard Nixon never used notes. He studied, learned his audience, settled on his message, and delivered it with conviction. As president, except for formal speeches, such as a State of the Union, Nixon spoke without notes.
As the assigned speechwriter on one of Nixon's most serious presidential addresses, greeting the returning Vietnam POWs in 1973, I gave him only a fact sheet and suggested remarks. All he had on stage that night was a stand-up microphone for the largest sit-down dinner in White House history.
Former President Ronald Reagan campaigned in 1980 and 1984 without teleprompters and with typed-up notes on "half-sheets" from eight-by-tens. Often those texts were typed with the plane on final approach, and Reagan marked them up, singling out words for emphasis and putting them in proper order. Consequently, he was able to have eye contact with audiences of thousands.
When Reagan's top aide, Mike Deaver, and I sat to offer suggestions for Reagan's inaugural address, Deaver convinced Reagan he could "get lost in the teleprompter," so the new president delivered that momentous speech in the same way he did his 1980 campaign speeches: from marked-up half-sheets.
Unlike Biden, Reagan used no teleprompter at Pointe du Hoc, thus preserving the solemnity of the site. And for what author Edmund Morris described as Reagan's "greatest speech" at the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in May of 1985 on a cold, damp overcast day, the president again spoke from simple half sheets off a stand-alone Lectern.
Can Harris rise to the history of her party's titans, such as JFK at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate — where a teleprompter would have appeared ludicrous?
Harris has much to prove how serious she is as a leader and potential statesperson.
Can she handle the job? Can she escape from the tyranny of scripted technology and engage directly with people?
As one who boasts of being a prosecutor, she needs to demonstrate she can address the jury.
As for Trump, he also has the challenge of Reagan's appearance at the Berlin Wall and the simplicity of Reagan's direct engagement with his audience by speaking from simple pieces of paper on which he had scribbled personal notes.
Trump has previously shown he can escape the teleprompter, and he might even regain the presidency if his escape includes fidelity to a familiar message without straying.
Ken Khachigian was chief speechwriter to Ronald Reagan, an aide to Richard Nixon and is author of the memoir "Behind Closed Doors: In the Room With Reagan and Nixon.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.