Can Kamala Harris win by standing for nothing?

Self-awareness is a rare trait in a politician, so when Tim Walz described himself at last week’s vice presidential debate as a “knucklehead," the Minnesota governor should have been applauded rather than mocked. It was a welcome moment of honesty in a short national political career that has so far been characterized by extended episodes of biographical dissimulation.

It might even have been endearing except that it came wrapped in a thick blanket of more obfuscation, bluster and diversion that left us all still confused not only about the man’s whereabouts when the Tiananmen Square massacre was taking place in Beijing, but about much more besides. I don’t suppose anyone cares where he thinks he was in June 1989, but there is something a little unsettling about the apparent compulsion on his part, as we’ve seen with claims about his military record, to place himself, like Woody Allen’s Zelig, at the center of events of world-historical importance.

Still, as things stand, he is merely a swing state and a heartbeat away from a genuinely world-historical moment. If our next vice president is to be a self-acknowledged knucklehead, then surely we have the right to know something similarly informative about the woman he might one day be called upon to replace. Yet here we are, four weeks from Election Day, and still the political identity, intellectual capacities and personal character of the Democratic candidate for president remain a riddle inside an enigma wrapped in a mystery.

This was underscored by another, unintentionally more revealing remark Mr. Walz made in that debate last week—not some blathering deer-in-the headlights response to a question, but evidently a carefully prepared and delivered part of his closing