Biden White House: Message discipline, no news conference
WASHINGTON — No news conference. No Oval Office address. No primetime speech to a joint session of Congress.
President Joe Biden is the first executive in four decades to reach this point in his term without holding a formal question and answer session. It reflects a White House media strategy meant both to reserve major media setpieces for the celebration of a legislative victory and to limit unforced errors from a historically gaffeprone politician.
Biden has opted to take questions about as often as most of his recent predecessors, but he tends to field just one or two informal inquires at a time, usually in a hurried setting at the end of an event.
In a sharp contrast with the previous administration, the White House is exerting extreme message discipline, empowering staff to speak but doing so with caution. Recalling both Biden’s largely leakfree campaign and the buttoned-up Obama administration, the new White House team has carefully managed the president’s appearances, trying to lower the temperature from Donald Trump’s Washington and to save a big media moment to mark what could soon be a signature accomplishment: passage of the COVID-19 bill.
The message control may serve the president’s purposes but it denies the media opportunities to directly press Biden on major policy issues and to engage in the kind of backand-forth that can draw out information and thoughts that go beyond the administration’s curated talking points.
“The president has lost some opportunity, I think, to speak to the country from the bully pulpit. The volume has been turned so low in the Biden White House that they need to worry about whether anyone is listening,“said Frank Sesno, former head of George Washington University’s school of media. “But he’s not great in these news conferences. He rambles. His strongest communication is not extemporaneous.”
Other modern presidents took more questions during their opening days in office.
By this point in their terms, Trump and George H.W. Bush had each held five press conferences, Bill Clinton four, George W. Bush three, Barack Obama two and Ronald Reagan one, according to a study by Martha Kumar, presidential scholar and professor emeritus at Towson University.
Biden has given five interviews as opposed to nine from Reagan and 23 from Obama.
“Biden came in with a plan for how they wanted to disseminate information. When you compare him with Trump, Biden has sense of how you use a staff, that a president can’t do everything himself,” Kumar said. “Biden has a press secretary who gives regular briefings. He knows you hold a news conference when you have something to say, in particular a victory. They have an idea of how to use this time, early in the administration when people are paying attention, and how valuable that is.”
The new president had taken questions 39 times, according to Kumar’s research, though usually just one or two shouted inquiries from a group of reporters known as the press pool at the end of an event in the White House’s State Dining Room or Oval Office.
Those exchanges can at times be clunky, with the cacophony of shouts or the whir of the blades of the presidential helicopter
idling on the South Lawn making it difficult to have a meaningful exchange.
“Press conferences are critical to informing the American people and holding an administration accountable to the public,” said Associated Press reporter Zeke Miller, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. “As it has with prior presidents, the WHCA continues to call on President Biden to hold formal press conferences with regularity.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday defended the president’s accessibility to the media and suggested that a news conference was likely by the end of March.
“I would say that his focus is on getting recovery and relief to the American people and he looks forward to continuing to engage with all of you and to other members of the media who aren’t here today,” Psaki said. “And we’ll look forward to letting you know, as soon as
that press conference is set.”
The president’s first address to a joint session of Congress — not technically a State of the Union address but a speech that typically has just as much pomp — is also tentatively planned for the end of March, aides have said. However, the format of the address is uncertain due to the pandemic.
The president has received high marks for two major scripted addresses, his inaugural address and his speech marking the 500,000th death to COVID-19.
Having overcome a childhood stutter, Biden has long enjoyed interplay with reporters and has defied aides’ requests to ignore questions from the press. Famously longwinded, Biden has been prone to gaffes throughout his long political career and, as president, has occasionally struggled with off-the-cuff remarks.
His use of the phrase “Neanderthal thinking” this week to describe the decision by the governors of Texas and Mississippi to lift mask mandates dominated a new cycle and drew ire from Republicans. That created the type of distraction his aides have tried to avoid and, in a pandemic silver lining, were largely able to dodge during the campaign because the virus kept Biden home for months and limited the potential for public mistakes.
Firmly pledging his belief in freedom of the press, Biden has rebuked his predecessor’s incendiary rhetoric toward the media, including Trump’s references to reporters as “the enemy of the people.” Biden restored the daily press briefing, which had gone extinct under Trump, opening a window into the workings of the White House. His staff has also fanned out over cable news to promote the COVID-19 relief bill.
And while Biden’s own Twitter account, in a sharp break from Trump’s social media habits, usually offers rote postings, his chief of staff Ron Klain has become a frequent tweeter, using the platform to amplify messages and critique opponents.
Delaying the news conference and joint address also, symbolically, have kept open the first chapter of Biden’s presidency and perhaps extended his honeymoon. His approval rating stood at 60% in a poll released Friday from The Associated PressNORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Tobe Berkovitz, a professor at Boston University’s college of communications, said Biden’s “rope-adope” strategy was right for the moment.
“Presidential press conferences are not on the top of the agenda for Americans who are worried about COVID and the economic disaster that has befallen so many families,” he said.
More than 27 million Americans fully vaccinated against the coronavirus will have to keep waiting for guidance from federal health officials for what they should and shouldn’t do.
The Biden administration said Friday it’s focused on getting the guidance right and accommodating emerging science, but the delays add to the uncertainty around bringing about an end to the pandemic as the nation’s virus fatigue grows.
“These are complex issues and the science is rapidly evolving,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Friday. “We are making sure and taking time to get this right and we will be releasing this guidance soon.”
Such guidance would address a flood of questions coming in from people who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19: Do I still have to wear a mask? Can I go to a bar now? Can I finally see my grandchildren?
The need has slowly grown since January, when the first Americans began to complete the two-dose series of COVID-19 vaccines then available. Now, more than half of people 65 and older have received at least one shot, according to Andy Slavitt, a senior administration adviser on the pandemic.
In Washington state, Raul Espinoza Gomez has 22 grandchildren and great-grandchildren and an appointment Saturday for his second dose of coronavirus vaccine.
By Easter, the 77-year-old’s immune system will be ready to protect him from the virus. But how the family celebrates will depend on government advice, said Melissa Espinoza, 47, of Carnation, Washington, who plans to drive Gomez, her father-in-law, to get his second shot.
“We didn’t gather together as a big family at Christmas,“she said. “We go by what the state and federal guidelines recommend. We’ve had family members adversely affected by COVID. We know the risks are severe.”
Worried about persistently high case loads and deaths, the Biden administration has condemned efforts to relax states’ virus restrictions and pleaded with the public for several months more patience.
The caution has drawn critics, who point to the administration’s own warnings that “fatigue is winning” as evidence that they need to be more optimistic about the path ahead to secure the cooperation of those who are yet to be vaccinated.
“I think it’s going to be overly proscriptive and conservative and that’s the wrong message,” former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CNBC Wednesday of the forthcoming CDC guidance. “If we continue to be very proscriptive and not give people a realistic vision for what a better future is going to look like, they’re going to start to ignore the public health guidance.”
Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the Division of Health Policy and Public Health, encouraged the CDC to be clearer about when and how it plans to produce guidelines for the vaccinated.
“Making the decision to go by the science is also making the decision that you’re going to have to make a decision, which is really difficult when the science isn’t settled,” he told the AP. “They’re drinking from a firehose of science, and sometimes, it gets messy.”
More than 54 million Americans have received at least one dose of vaccine, and slightly more than half — nearly 28 million — have gotten the recommended two doses. The single-dose Johnson & Johnson shot soon will add a couple million more Americans with questions about what new freedoms they can safely enjoy.
“I do hope I get to see my greatgrandchildren more,“said Rolando Solar, 92, who received his second dose in Miami Wednesday. “But I know things will not go back to normal and, for an old man like me, this is as good as it will be.”
Tami Katz-Freiman, 65, of Miami, got her second dose three
weeks ago, and plans to watch the Miami Film Festival virtually Sunday at the home of unvaccinated friends. All will wear masks.
“We didn’t have to discuss it with each other, because it’s very clear to me that when there is a doubt and you don’t have a CDC straightforward rule you better be on the safe side and take care for yourself,” Katz-Freiman said.
Three weeks ago, the CDC announced that fully vaccinated people do not have to go into quarantine if they have contact with someone with a confirmed infection (for 90 days after the final shot). But the agency said nothing beyond that, noted Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University.
“That (quarantine guidance) seems to imply to me that your chance of contracting COVID-19 and being a carrier to others is pretty low,” said Wen, who previously ran Baltimore’s health department.
“(But) we need to focus on what is most relevant to people’s lives, and my patients are not coming in and asking me: ‘If I’m vaccinated, do I still need to quarantine if I’m exposed?’“she continued.
“I’d say the most common question I get is ‘Can I visit my grandchildren?’” Wen said.
Experts say it’s understandable that the CDC has been cautious when many scientific questions remain, including how long vaccine-induced immunity lasts, and whether vaccinated people are
still able to transmit the virus to others. The answers are important when advising someone what kind of risk they face in different settings, and how much of a risk they are to others.
“The vaccines at their best, in the clinical trials, were 95% effective, I didn’t say 100%. And that’s why we have to keep wearing masks most of the time,“said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectiousdiseases expert at Vanderbilt University.
But CDC has needed to come out with something more for vaccinated people than sticking with the same old mask wearing, social distancing guidance, he added.
“People are so eager to do something and they want to see some tangible benefit from the
vaccines. Americans are impatient. They want to get on with it,” Schaffner said.
Indeed, “there is a real cost to putting off this guidance,” as people turn to their own doctors for advice, or just make their own assumptions and decisions, Wen said.
Waiting too long can diminish the agency’s relevance on this kind of matter, said Wen, who believes CDC should have had some kind of guidance in place for vaccinated people back in January.
Clearly, vaccinated people should have been encouraged to go get cancer screenings, dental care, or other needed medical appointments. CDC officials also could have said that it’s OK for small groups of fully vaccinated people — maybe two or three couples, for example — to gather together for a dinner or other small gathering, she said.
Regarding small gatherings among people who have been fully vaccinated, “the relative risk is so low that you would not have to wear a mask, that you could have a good social gathering within the home,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading infectious diseases doctor, during a recent White House briefing.
Some experts discussed the possibility that movie theaters or cruise ships or certain other businesses might open up to vaccinated people, and ask for proof of vaccination status. Israel’s government has begun issuing a “green pass” vaccination certificate to anyone who has received two doses of COVID vaccine through an accredited vaccination service.
“I don’t know if in this country we would tolerate the federal government issue some kind of pass, the way they did in Israel,” Wen said. But businesses might want such passes and they would be an incentive that might help the overall rate of vaccination, Wen said.
The only incentive Espinoza’s family needed for vaccination was seeing her and her husband hospitalized with COVID-19 this winter. Still recovering, she uses oxygen at home.
Vaccination of the family elders means one step closer to returning to traditions they love: Church on Palm Sunday and, a week later, an Easter egg hunt for the kids and a meal featuring slow-cooked barbacoa, a Mexican beef dish.
“I hope people will stay home and stay safe as much as possible until we can all get vaccinated and eradicate this disease,“Espinoza said.