When President Biden finally holds his first press conference as promised later this month, he will face questions about whether his delay undermines his administration’s promise of transparency.
He is the first White House occupant in four decades to reach this point in his term without appearing for a formal question-and-answer session with reporters, revealing what analysts believe are his aides’ efforts to protect a notoriously stumble-prone president.
New data reveal that an administration that campaigned on a commitment to transparency lags behind its six direct predecessors in presidential press conferences.
By the 50-day mark (reached last week), former President George H.W. Bush had held five press conferences, Donald Trump and Bill Clinton five, Bill Clinton four, George W. Bush three, and Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan two, according to a study by Martha Kumar, presidential scholar and professor emeritus at Towson University.
FOUR BUZZWORDS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS USE TO SIGNAL TO THE LEFT
He has also given fewer interviews than his most recent predecessors — five compared with Trump’s 19 and Obama’s 25, although he is on par with both Bushes and Clinton.
But he has taken shouted questions from journalists on 42 occasions, more than anyone except Clinton.
Kumar said presidential aides frequently think about the risks of a misstep rather than the rewards of press interactions. For Biden, the longer the wait, the greater the potential damage, she said.
“The longer you go, the more these problems become your problems, not Trump’s problems,” she said.
50 days of Biden.
No press conference.
Why? The American People deserve transparency!
— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) March 11, 2021
Republicans say the result is an alarming lack of openness.
“Every day Pres. Biden goes without a press conference, he sets a new modern record for a lack of presidential transparency,” the Republican National Committee tweeted recently.
The result is a sharp break with the Trump administration and a 45th president who liked nothing better than to hold forth, taking question after question on the South Lawn as the engines of Marine One roared or in a crowded Oval Office. His coronavirus briefings became must-watch TV — in part because of the way he would contradict his own health officials or make outlandish proposals about using injections of disinfectant to cure patients.
Kumar said Biden would probably have given a joint press conference by now with a visiting head of state were it not for coronavirus restrictions.
“I think the pandemic has some role here, but I don’t think they want the president being his own communications director and his own press secretary,” she said. “That comes on the heels of an administration where the president was the only one who knew what he was thinking or going to do — and sometimes you got the idea that he didn’t know either.”
But his absence from the cut-and-thrust of press conferences runs the risk of questions about whether the White House is hiding something.
Presidential historian Joshua Kendall said there are no rules for how a president should interact with the media and that press secretary Jen Psaki’s strong performances, along with the use of other key advisers in briefings, reduces the cost of keeping Biden under wraps.
However, the longer the delay, the greater the potential damage of so-called “gotcha” questions about the president’s health.
“I think that’s part of their calculation,” he said of the 78-year-old Biden. “I don’t think the questions would be so much about transparency, but they would be about his state of mind. Is he really slowing down?”
The White House has promised a press conference before the end of the month, and Psaki has said the president has been busy with tackling the pandemic and rebuilding the economy.
“That’s where his time, energy, his focus has been,” she said recently. “But in the meantime, he takes questions multiple times a week and looks forward to continuing to do that.”
His longest interaction came after signing an executive order on Jan. 25, when he took questions for about 20 minutes. On other occasions, the interactions can last less than a minute as reporters are ushered from the room by shouting aides.
On Monday, he delivered a 102-word answer after being asked whether he would welcome Trump’s help in persuading conservatives to be vaccinated.
Harold Holzer, a former congressional press secretary and author of the book The Presidents vs. The Press, said the Biden team is following the Reagan strategy for a president thought to prone to verbal slips of limiting appearances while hammering out a “message of the day.”
“It worked for Reagan, and I think, for Biden, they are trying to effect the same kind of image-building without spending the briefing required for a press conference,” he said.
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“Do I think it’s wise? No, because I think it will increasingly become an issue if he seems to be avoiding scrutiny, and I don’t think it’s worth it,” Holzer added. “And I think he’s absolutely fine.”
