Time will tell if 'rope-a-dope' strategy works

Before his July 25, 1946, match against Jackie Graves, featherweight boxing champion Willie Pep bet he could win a round without throwing a punch. Bobbing and weaving and using deft footwork, Pep did indeed win the round without throwing a single punch, and went on to win the fight, proving the old sports adage that the best offense is a good defense."He who hits and runs away, lives to fight another day," said the 5-foot-5 Pep, a two-time world featherweight champion from the Hartford area who is ranked among the greatest pound-for-pound boxers in the sport's history.Years later, Muhammad Ali, considered by many to be the greatest boxer of all time, perfected a defensive technique called "rope-a-dope," with which he leaned back on the ring's ropes and let his opponent exhaust himself by throwing lots of punches, most of which didn't land. The strategy is credited with Ali's stunning upset of then-heavyweight champion George Foreman in 1974.Pep's and Ali's slippery defensive strategies came to mind when Kamala Harris participated recently in a couple of serious news media interviews instead of just sipping beer with late-night host Stephen Colbert, schmoozing with Oprah Winfrey or laughing it up with shock-jock-gone-soft Howard Stern.After more than two months without a serious solo news interview, Harris finally entered the media ring with consecutive October sessions with CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker and Fox News anchor Brett Baier.The interviews were in contrast to her opponent Donald Trump's withdrawal from his own 60 Minutes interview and another last week with CNBC, as well as his refusal to debate Harris a second time after she beat him convincingly in their only debate on Sept. 10. So much for Trump's anytime-anywhere bravado.Pep and Ali had nothing on Harris as an escape artist. Asked about her flip-flops on fracking and immigration, gun confiscation and elimination of private health insurance, she talked about listening to voters and building consensus. Asked if it was a mistake to allow millions of immigrants to enter the country illegally, she blamed Trump and congressional Republicans for killing a bipartisan bill she claims would have addressed the crisis. Asked how she will pay for the plethora of grants and tax credits she'd offer as president, and she promised to increase taxes on the rich.With a nod to Jerry Seinfeld, it was mostly just yada yada yada.Ironically, though, the worst of Harris's media slips occurred in what was supposed to be friendly, easily navigable territory. Appearing on ABC's The View, she said "there is not a thing that comes to mind," when asked if she'd do anything differently from Biden's term in office."And I've been a part of most of the decisions that had impact," she added.When Colbert asked on CBS's The Late Night Show what "major changes" there would be in a Harris administration compared to Biden's, her answer was no better."Well, I'm obviously not Joe Biden," she said. "And so that would be one change. But also, I think it's important to say with 28 days to go (before the election), I'm not Donald Trump."With Biden's approval ratings at record lows throughout much of his presidency due to inflation, immigration and other issues, Harris needed to be better prepared for the questions, even from friendly interviewers. You can expect to see at least one of those quotes soon in Trump's television ads even though she offered a more honed answer when asked by Fox's Baier in the later interview."Let me be very clear: my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden's presidency," she said, pointing to her campaign support from and inclusion of Republicans and federal aid for first-time home buyers and small businesses.Still, it begs the question: if these are good, sound proposals, why haven' they been advanced and carried out in the past 3 1/2 years, especially in the first two when fellow Democrats held majorities in both the House and Senate and could have enacted them?Fancy footwork and rope-a-dope may have been good defensive boxing strategies, but probably not so much in dodging uncomfortable media questions. When a candidate wants voters to know who she is and what she stands for, honesty and self-accountability are more effective.All this might explain Harris's recent slide in the polls with only 16 days until the election. She now trails Trump among voters nationwide, and once-wider leads she held in seven battleground states have either narrowed or evaporated.When asking about her many position changes on important issues in the election, CBS's Whitaker paraphrased Harris's critics and media who "say that the reason so many voters don't know you is that you have changed your position on so many things ... so many, that people don't truly know what you believe or what you stand for."We will know soon enough whether Harris's defense was good enough to win this historically close election or whether something resembling Harry Truman's "The buck stops here" mantra would have worked better.Bill Stanley, a former reporter at The Day, is a retired vice president of Lawrence + Memorial Hospital.