WASHINGTON (AP) – No press conference. Not an oval office address. Not a prime-time speech to a joint session of Congress.
President Joe Biden is the first executive in four decades to reach this point in his tenure without holding a formal question and answer session. It reflects a White House media strategy designed to both reserve key media institutions for the celebration of a legislative victory and to limit casual mistakes made by a historically blunder-prone politician.
Biden has chosen to answer questions as often as most of his recent predecessors, but he tends to answer only one or two casual questions at a time, usually in a hurried setting at the end of an event.
In stark contrast to the previous administration, the White House exercises extreme messaging discipline, which allows staff to speak, but does so with caution. Recalling both Biden’s largely leak-free campaign and the buttoned-down Obama administration, the new White House team carefully managed the president’s appearance, trying to lower the temperature of Donald Trump’s Washington and save a major media moment to highlight what could happen soon. a signed achievement: passage of the COVID-19 bill.
The message management can serve the purposes of the president, but it denies the media the ability to press directly on Biden on major policy issues and to do the kind of back and forth that can bring out information and thoughts beyond the compound talking points from the government.
“The president missed an opportunity, I think, to speak to the country from the pulpit. The volume has been turned so low in Biden’s White House that they should be concerned if anyone is listening, ”said Frank Sesno, former principal of George Washington University’s school of media. But he’s not great at these news conferences. He is erring. His strongest communication is not off the cuff. “
Other modern presidents answered more questions during their opening days.
At this point in their terms, Trump and George HW Bush had each held five press conferences, Bill Clinton four, George W. Bush three, Barack Obama two, and Ronald Reagan one, according to a survey by Martha Kumar, presidential scholar and professor emeritus at the Towson. University.
Biden has given five interviews instead of nine for Reagan and 23 for Obama.
“Biden came up with a plan for how they wanted to disseminate information. If you compare him to Trump, Biden knows how to use a staff, that a president can’t do everything himself, ”said Kumar. “Biden has a press secretary who gives regular briefings. He knows you’re holding a press conference when you have something to say, especially a win. They have an idea of how to use this time, early in the administration when people are paying attention, and how valuable that is. “
According to Kumar’s investigation, the new president had answered questions 39 times, although at the end of an event at the White House’s State Dining Room or Oval Office, usually only one or two questions were shouted from a group of reporters known as the press pool.
Those exchanges can be clumsy at times, with the cacophony of screams or the buzz of the presidential helicopter blades idling on the South Lawn making it difficult to have a meaningful exchange.
“Press conferences are critical to educating the American people and making a government accountable to the public,” said Zeke Miller, the chairman of the White House Correspondents’ Association. “As with previous presidents, the WHCA continues to call on President Biden to hold regular formal press conferences.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended the president’s accessibility to the media on Friday, suggesting that a press conference would likely be held in late March.
“I would say his focus is on bringing about recovery and relief for the American people and he looks forward to continuing to engage with you and other members of the media who are not around today,” said Psaki. “And we look forward to letting you know once that press conference has been held.”
The president’s first speech to a joint session of Congress – not technically a State of the Union address but one that typically has just as much pomp – is also tentatively scheduled for the end of March, aides said. However, the format of the address is uncertain due to the pandemic.
The president has received high marks for two key speeches in the script, his inaugural address and his speech marking the 500,000th death of COVID-19.
After overcoming the stuttering of his childhood, Biden has long enjoyed interacting with reporters and has defied assistants’ requests to ignore press inquiries. Famously long-winded, Biden has been prone to blunders throughout his long political career and, as president, has occasionally struggled with ready-made remarks.
His use of the phrase “Neanderthal thinking” this week to describe the decision of the Texas and Mississippi governors to remove mask mandates dominated a new cycle and angered Republicans. That created the kind of distraction his assistants tried to avoid and, in a pandemic silver lining, they were largely able to dodge during the campaign as the virus kept Biden at home for months and limited the chance of public error.
Biden has affirmed his belief in freedom of the press and has reproached his predecessor’s inflammatory rhetoric to the media, including Trump’s references to reporters as “the enemy of the people.” Biden restored the daily press briefing, which had died out under Trump, and opened a window into the workings of the White House. His staff have also fanned out over cable news to promote the COVID-19 bill.
And while Biden’s own Twitter account, in a sharp break with Trump’s social media habits, offers mostly plain messages, his Chief of Staff Ron Klain has become a frequent tweeter, using the platform to bolster posts and criticize opponents.
Postponing the press conference and joint speech have also symbolically kept open the first chapter of Biden’s presidency and perhaps extended his honeymoon. His approval score was 60% in a poll released Friday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Tobe Berkovitz, a professor at Boston University’s College of Communications, said Biden’s “rope-a-dope” strategy was right at this point.
“Presidential press conferences are not at the top of the agenda for Americans concerned about COVID and the economic disaster that has befallen so many families,” he said.
Lemire reported from New York.