The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Beyond the briefing: Psaki aims to change the White House press strategy
WASHINGTON — On the night before President Joe Biden’s inauguration and her first briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was seized by nerves and the weight of the responsibility.
“I came running into the kitchen and I said to my husband ‘What if they have a lot of questions about Venezuela? I don’t know if I know enough about Venezuela,’ ” she said, laughing at the memory. “He was like ‘I don’t know if on the first day that’s they’re going to ask you a lot about Venezuela.’ He was right, but the point is it’s like cramming for final — there is no end of things you can read,
of policies you can know more about.”
One month on the job, Psaki has made her goals crystal clear: Help the public trust the government, set up a better press shop than presidents Donald Trump or Barack Obama had and get out in about a year’s time.
A veteran political communicator, Psaki, 42, quickly restored the traditional exchanges between the executive branch and reporters after four years of upheaval under Trump and amid the worst economic and health crisis in a century. Since her first daily press briefing on Inauguration Day, she’s calmly delivered Biden’s plans with few obvious stumbles.
Most days, Psaki’s statements are carefully onmessage announcements of what Biden’s team is doing to combat COVID-19 packaged in simple bytes that worried moms would understand — she’s the mother of two preschool-age children. But there’s one area where the Biden press office already feels they’re being “misunderstood” by the media, Psaki, who grew up in Greenwich and Stamford, said in an interview Monday.
“There’s been a whole discussion about whether we’re achieving bipartisanship one month into the administration,” she said. “Bipartisanship is pushing for policies that bring the country together that the majority of people feel it will help them and impact them — not creating one party in Washington.”
Psaki speaks to Biden “almost every day,” she said, and through press briefings, statements and social media posts serves as the voice of his administration to the public he’s trying to unify. It’s one of the most public-facing and highly scrutinized roles in the White House.
“Whether you agree or disagree with the president, she’s doing her job well,” said Ari Fleischer, who was President George W. Bush’s White House press secretary from 2001 to 2003. “She’s articulate. She’s a good defender.”
But due to the coronavirus, Psaki has yet to experience the most challenging part of the job — a standing-room-only briefing room packed with press hounding for a story, Fleischer said. During her first month on the job, briefing room attendance has been capped at about a quarter of its usual capacity.
“In some ways, her ultimate test hasn’t yet taken place,” he said.
Former White House press secretaries Robert Gibbs and Jay Carney, both of whom worked with Psaki in the Obama White House, said Psaki is one of the most experienced and competent communicators ever to step into the job.
Psaki was Obama’s traveling campaign secretary and during his administration served in nearly every role in the White House press office, as well as spokesperson for the U.S. State Department. She was was a finalist for the White House press secretary job when it opened up in 2014, Gibbs and Carney confirmed.
“She’s unflappable because she knows how to handle to a situation like this,” Carney said. “She knows how much her tone matters and her credibility.”
To get ready for the role, Psaki spoke with past press secretaries, including Gibbs and Carney and asked for their advice. She watched White House press briefings back to the 1990s and she prepares the massive daily briefing binder every day herself, she said on CNN.
While she looked to the past for guidance, Psaki does not want her press office to be a replay of the Obama strategy, she said.
“We’re constantly talking about how we can better connect with the American people directly. We’re still going to do the daily briefings of course,” she said. “I’ve done a couple of these where I’ve taken questions from Twitter . ... we’re going to look to peel the curtain back a little more behind the scenes, whether it’s during trips or in the White House. We’ll look for ways to augment and build on the press briefing.”
Psaki said her press team is significantly more diverse than when she was working in the White House in 2009. She leads an all-female senior communications, but less than one month in, a male deputy White House press secretary made harassing and sexist comments to a female reporter on the job. Psaki suspended him for a week and then, after reporters pressed her on Biden’s stated no-tolerance policy for harassment, the staffer resigned.
“I’ve been a woman moving my way through a male-dominated industry for almost 20 years, so I am quite sensitive to the sexism that still exists, the language that shouldn’t be used in any conversation,” Psaki said. “I think the fact that he is no longer employed at the White House reflects our view that if we are going to reflect civility and project a commitment to focusing on how we engage with others, that was the only way that could end.”
The hardest part of the job is trying to squeeze in time for her young children, she said.
“I’m sure I’ll remember lots of things from this experience, but one of the things that will stick with me is I was making some edits to a press release announcing some of our cabinet nominees during the transition and my two kids were kind of naked in the bathroom. I had the computer in there with me,” she said. “The balance is very tricky.”
Born in Stamford, Psaki attended the Early Learning Center, a Stamford Montessori school now known as the Children’s School, then Sacred Heart Greenwich and Greenwich Country Day School, whose alumni include former President George H.W. Bush and Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin.
She graduated from Greenwich High School in 1996. Psaki was the sports editor of the high school newspaper, “The Beak,” and a co-captain of the swim team, swimming the backstroke and butterfly. Psaki later attended the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where she majored in English, swam competitively for two years and became president of the school’s Chi Omega sorority.
“You don’t get up at 5 a.m., three days a week if you don’t have goals,” her former GHS swimming teammate Katherine Didriksen Barone. “We all really have enjoyed sharing in her success . ... In some ways, it feels like she is up there [at the podium] representing all of us.”
While she’s savoring the historic moments she is part of, Psaki said her next goal is setting up someone else to take over the press secretary’s podium in about a year’s time.
“One of the reasons I was really excited about this opportunity is I wanted to help support and provide resources to and perspective to and a safety net to another group of people who haven’t had the opportunity like I have to serve in prominent roles in the White House before,” she said. “I’m striving to be somebody who looks for opportunities to lift other people up.”