Bdue finally to the tradition of the White House, or perhaps only to the crescendo of tsk-tskBased on a damaged Beltway news outlet, Joe Biden has finally scheduled his first formal press conference for Thursday, March 25, the 64th day of his incipient presidency.
“It’s a problem: who are we kidding? More than two months without a press conference? Come on! ”A veteran White House correspondent told The Daily Beast, asking that he not be identified anymore for fear that criticism of Biden’s White House, for all his service to the First Amendment, could provoke some sort of of punishment.
“Obviously, there is no equivalence between this and how the press was treated under Donald Trump (I think we all suffer from post-Trump stress disorder), but that extends the boundaries of access and transparency.”
The correspondent admitted, however, that “from a strategic point of view, it makes perfect sense because why would he want to be asked all the time about his predecessor? O Hunter Biden? There will always be awkward questions, regardless of who holds the position. But here’s a liability issue that you just dodged completely. He’s too handsome in the middle. They seem to be doing it because they think it just sends them the message. “
Trump, at the time of his presidency, had held five press conferences, although four of them were the so-called “two-and-two” with visiting foreign leaders, with only two questions from each nation’s press corps. .
Like the Washington PostMedia journalist Paul Farhi noted in a recent story, this startling media shyness of the former senator and vice president: “the longest a new president has spent without meeting with the press in the last 100 years,” he said. writing Farhi — has provoked all sorts of severe warnings from the journalism elite.
“Americans have every right to expect to be subjected to substantial interrogations on a regular basis,” he told Publication editorial. “As has happened with previous presidents,” Zeke Miller, president of the Associated Press’s White House Correspondents Association, said in a statement, “the WHCA continues to ask President Biden to hold press conferences. formal with regularity “.
“The most important thing for Biden’s success as president … is to communicate as often as possible what he does and why, and I think they do a good job of it.”
– Jay Carney, Obama White House press secretary
He National MagazineWhite House correspondent George Condon, former WHCA president, argued that while full-dress press conferences play an essential role in “better understanding the president’s thinking,” Biden’s White House deserves a certain margin of maneuver logistical challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There’s no one who can give press conferences more than me, but I think you’ll have to put that in context a little bit,” Condon told The Daily Beast. Do you have the reality that the White House and the Association of Correspondents just complain every week about “why can’t we get into the information room”? [because of social-distancing requirements that limit the press seating to just 14]. If you receive these complaints, what demand will the world have for an internal press conference? It’s just a very difficult situation … If it was a normal non-pandemic situation, it would be one of the loudest voices complaining. “
Meanwhile, a Biden White House official who preferred to remain anonymous insisted that the alleged act of disappearance of the president is false news. Aside from the much-delayed press conference, this person emailed The Daily Beast that Biden “has made a CNN town hall, Univision, [an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos], and receives questions from the press here at the White House several times a week. “
Of course, Biden usually presents only one or two questions at a time, often with concrete answers and zero follow-ups, an exchange that sometimes competes with the roar of helicopter blades. Or you can answer a question during the pool screening when a small contingent of reporters is introduced into the oval office for a minute or two and “you can’t hear us half the time,” as one reporter complained the other day in the White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
“Press conferences are critical to informing the American people and holding an administration accountable to the public,” said WHCA’s Zeke Miller.
But are they?
“I strongly support this reluctance at the Biden press conference,” Atlantic magazine staff writer David Frum, George W. Bush’s White House speechwriter, published this past week Twitter, where he argued that any president, by definition, is a politically polarizing lightning rod and, “keeping a low profile, Biden is de-escalating and de-paralyzing politics, a smart move” that demonstrates not only that “the presidency is a ensemble performance, not an individual show ”, but also this very emotional and often overly talkative man [can] to gather the self-discipline necessary to succeed at work ”.
Frum also argued that presidential press conferences in general, whether gladiators or merely theatrical, contribute much less to public knowledge than stubborn and weed journalism: “Reporters get useful information from operational officials from what they can possibly do. “And they’re less tempted to do performative tricks. No one ever says to a reporter, ‘Congratulations, you really broke the IRS commissioner!’
“I really don’t think Joe Biden has anything to fear.”
– A veteran White House correspondent
Press critic Soledad O’Brien, a long-time journalist and television documentary filmmaker, offered a typically jaundiced interpretation: “It feels like what the White House press body wants, unlike the significant information it gave the president at his press conference I want the president to show that the White House press body is very, very important … For me, it talks more about the White House press body that wants to be seen as very, very important and credible compared to ‘the American people have these questions’ ”.
O’Brien added, “This idea is that we count back the‘ days since, ’when you had president [Trump] who was literally a pathological liar, it seems to them [the news media] they claim controversy, because they can only talk about these things if they are framed as a controversy ”.
However, Bill Clinton’s White House press secretary Mike McCurry, who served longer, who skillfully (though uncomfortably) navigated the Monica Lewinsky scandal, predicted that the White House Biden will finally conclude that formal press conferences are at least as beneficial to the president as they are to the media.
“The process of preparing for a press conference is elaborate,” McCurry told The Daily Beast. “In my time, it involved President Clinton and Vice President Gore sitting at the end of the table, and I was the inquisitor. I would put the worst version of any question I thought the press could ask. And it would normally infuriate President Clinton. Al Gore’s job was to calm him down. He said to me, ‘Mr. President, the American people love that the veins in your neck come out and you have a red face like that. That’s good! Show energy! ‘And everyone would laugh. And it would calm down. ”
McCurry continued, “The important point, though, is that we would follow the guidelines they had given us about this or that particular answer, and invariably Clinton would say ‘this sucks, this says nothing’ and I would say, ‘ I know, but here we are a little bit. “And I would stop the preparation of the press conference and call the Cabinet Secretary on any issue that came up, and it was an action-driven event. Politics would move, because we had to to have a better policy to talk about anything that was proposed in response, so the usefulness of the press conference is that it really enforces better government. “
As for the frequency or lack of formal exchanges between the president and the press, “it is a concern in the media, but not The voice of the people“McCurry said.
This view was echoed by former Obama White House press secretary Jay Carney, who before that job was the head of the Washington office for Time magazine and then communications director for Vice President Biden.
“This is a one-stop debate, which is in DC news circles and primarily in the White House press corps,” Carney said, currently Amazon’s senior vice president for global corporate affairs. “From the point of view of the press, I understand that they want more,” Carney told The Daily Beast, “but the most important thing for Biden’s success as president — on behalf of the people, not for any other The reason is to communicate as often as possible, what it does and why, and I think they do a good job of it. “
Carney added: “What feels important in Washington, in the west wing or in the newsroom is not exactly the same as what is important to most Americans … Most people who are struggling, who are exhausted by COVID, just want to see results .. They don’t care if you give a press conference or ten press conferences … If you start to think that your Washington critics are the same as your national critics, will lose “.
Not surprisingly, the announcement of Biden’s impending press conference has done nothing to calm the dark speculations of his detracting supporters in the opposition media.
“What kind of press conference will it be? Will you have a teleprompter? Will you know the questions in advance? Will it summon only sympathetic journalists? “Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney reflected the other day.” I think there will be a teleprompter that you can only activate when you need a definite answer. “
Varney guest Joe Concha, a contributor to Fox News, said: “Even with the low expectations that Joe Biden has, as is always the case with this president to the extent that he speaks outside of a teleprompter, this does not it will be fine if journalists ask solid, difficult questions with follow-ups, ”he predicted.
The eager thinking of serial liars such as ousted White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and former Donald Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows have included claims that Biden, 78, is being protected by his managers because it simply does not live up to a vigorous exchange on live television with aggressive work reporters.
Several Trump acolytes and election deniers on Newsmax and Fox News, particularly Sean Hannity, have diagnosed dementia at President No. 46, a false accusation undermined by, among other evidence, Biden’s informed and confident performance during his interview. of news with Stephanopoulos.
“I really don’t think Joe Biden has anything to be afraid of,” said the veteran White House correspondent who asked not to be identified anymore. “It simply came to our notice then. Biden held press conferences during the campaign. He is a professional. I have no doubt that he would be able to handle himself well.
On the other hand, “I think there is an opportunity for journalists to exaggerate, overtake their skis and embarrass themselves and their outlets if they are too attached to President Biden,” the veteran correspondent said. “If Peter Doocy comes out and pretends Joe Biden is Donald Trump, that won’t be good for Fox News or Peter Doocy, it’s not that they care. “