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NYT:
WASHINGTON — In the 100 years since Calvin Coolidge was first elected, only Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan held as few news conferences each year as the current occupant of the Oval Office.
…despite his press secretary pledging that Mr. Biden would “bring transparency and truth back to the government,” the president has granted the fewest interviews since Mr. Reagan was president: only 54. (Donald J. Trump gave 202 during the first two years of his presidency; Barack Obama gave 275.)
As a journalist, I suppose I should be angry or miffed about this. But I am not.
Part of this is because Joe Biden has never, ever been all that talented an extemporaneous speaker. This isn’t an age thing. It’s a career-long habit. He sticks his foot in his mouth all the time. He even called himself a “gaffe machine” once, and the consequences for gaffes can be pretty serious when you’re the president of the United States. Just to take one obvious example: On a couple of occasions now, Biden has in interviews undermined the longstanding American policy of “strategic ambiguity” about whether we’d come to Taiwan’s aid if China ever invades. That raised tensions with China.
I’m fine not having press conferences if it means we don’t have World War III.
But this isn’t just a Biden thing. You know who did love jousting with the press? Trump. The two years that the NYT references above doesn’t include 2020, when the pandemic happened and Trump as president decided to hold forth with reporters live on TV for an hour or more every weekday afternoon. Was that experience enlightening? Did we learn a lot? Was the additional media availability good for … anybody?
The media’s job is to hold power to account, and there are definitely times when a president needs to stand and answer questions.
But a lot of presidential encounters with reporters are just so much theater. When Trump and his people would battle CNN’s Jim Acosta in the White House briefing room, both sides got what they wanted — lots and lots of attention — but I’m not sure any accountability was to be had. If you’re old enough, you remember Sam Donaldson screaming questions at Ronald Reagan on the lawn. It was fun and funny to watch. But I don’t remember any of Donaldson’s questions. And I don’t remember any of Reagan’s answers.
What did we learn? That Sam Donaldson could be very bombastic. He got paid a lot of money for that bombast.
I’m trying to think if I’d be saying the same thing if Ron DeSantis was in charge. Maybe, maybe not. DeSantis has a habit of meeting only ideologically friendly press while shutting everybody else out. That, it seems to me, is different and wrong. Biden doesn’t give the media many opportunities to take a crack at him, but when he does Fox News’ White House correspondent usually gets a chance to ask a provocative question.
Maybe we’ll find out the Hunter Biden scandal could’ve broken wide open if only reporters had had a few more chances to ask the president questions in public. Maybe this matters more than it looks right now.
If Joe Biden wants to keep ducking the press, though, I’m fine with it for now.
Press conferences are unnecessary. "Fireside chats" however, are useful, and should be employed more often.
I think we need to hear from our president. Remember the oft-quoted Maya Angelou admonition: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” The key here is for Joe Biden to show us who he is. He is disappearing from the working press. What does this say about who he is? I think the president is hiding a lot.