Bernstein: The end of presidential press conferences

It’s hardly surprising that White House correspondents are getting antsy at events as festive as Monday’s Easter Egg Roll. President Donald Trump is far from approaching even Ronald Reagan’s low standard for holding solo press conferences, the grandest display of engagement between our chief executive and the fourth estate.

Reagan only held 46 of them during his eight years, which was the record lowest pace during the era in which we have statistics (going back to Calvin Coolidge). The larger question is about Trump’s availability to reporters: Is it sufficient? Trump will sometimes take questions in impromptu groups of White House reporters. He’ll sit down for extended interviews with individual reporters or a team from one outlet, which past presidents have done. And he’ll sometimes answer shouted questions. Indeed he did that at the Easter Egg event that provoked some outrage. He answered CNN’S Jim Acosta’s first question before ignoring the follow-up.

The other question is just how important formal press conferences are, anyway?

In a way, there’s nothing special about them; nothing that separates them from all the other formats in which all presidents wind up answering questions from reporters. There’s really very little to distinguish them from impromptu sessions - it’s not as if the very competent White House press corps really needs advance notice to prepare their questions.

Nor do either formal press conferences or any other format force the president to talk about something he doesn’t want to talk about. No one gets to the White House without learning the skill of deflecting a question - even a perfectly conceived one.

But on balance, presidential press conferences are an institution worth saving. Even if they aren’t the only, or even necessarily the best, way for presidents to interact with real questioners, they at least guarantee that he’ll be exposed to tough questions from independent reporters on a somewhat regular basis.

I suspect we all intuitively think that’s important in a democracy without knowing precisely why. I’ll suggest that it’s related to representation. A healthy representational relationship requires that politicians explain their actions in office to their constituents. That imperative, however, conflicts with the natural incentive to only report good news, including the good news of promises fulfilled.

The other reason for preserving and defending presidential press conferences is for their purely symbolic value. Whatever their actual importance, these events have come to stand for democratic values of openness in government and the idea that the president works for the people, rather than ruling over them. I’ve been surprised and a bit disappointed that the press hasn’t made a bigger fuss about Trump’s failure to hold solo news conferences.

I hope they step up the pressure. And I suppose yelling questions at otherwise inappropriate times is one way to do it.