For presidential historian Craig Shirley, the commander in chief’s traditional interview on Super Bowl Sunday is a “sacred” day and one on which the bully pulpit should be avoided.
“It’ll push people away from what he’s trying to achieve. There’s certain things you don’t mess around with,” Shirley told the Washington Examiner. “On Super Bowl Sunday, Joe America doesn’t want to hear from their politicians or elected officials.”
But President Biden doesn’t appear to have heeded Shirley’s advice.
Although the interview is set to air before the Sunday showdown between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, excerpts released Friday included Biden saying he doesn’t believe former President Donald Trump should be entitled to intelligence briefings and expressing doubt over a provision in his coronavirus package that Democrats are barreling through Congress.
Presidents who have failed to “stick to sports,” metaphorically speaking, have suffered the consequences, Shirley said.
Among former President Jimmy Carter’s “big mistakes” was inserting himself into a nationally televised football game on Dec. 16, 1979, when Washington met the Dallas Cowboys in the final game of the regular season with a playoff berth on the line.
“Carter broke into the game to announce a so-called important development in the Iranian hostage crisis. And there was no development, despite what the president said. It rebounded badly,” Shirley continued.
Carter announced a proclamation for a National Unity Day, directing officials to display the flag “on all Government buildings” and urging Americans to observe the day by flying the flag from their homes.
Trump debuted a campaign commercial in 2020 during Super Bowl 54 — a 30-second spot focused on his criminal justice reform efforts.
“And look what happened to him,” Shirley said.
He added, “Presidents have been traditionally wise about not messing around with the Super Bowl.”
Unlike the nationally televised inaugural address or State of the Union, a presidential Super Bowl interview is not explicitly political, but it can still be a source of controversy for newly elected presidents.
Before Super Bowl 51, Trump, weeks into his presidency, defended Russian President Vladimir Putin against accusations that the leader was a “killer,” telling Bill O’Reilly, then of Fox News, “We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?”
Trump added, “I do respect Putin.”
Former President Barack Obama sat down with NBC in 2009 amid efforts to negotiate his own bipartisan economic recovery package. He defended taxpayer bailout money going to Wall Street banks and automakers as firms paid bonuses to bankers and industry executives flew into Washington for congressional hearings on private jets.
“If you’re president, you don’t inject yourself into some things that are private and sacred to the American people. You don’t insert yourself into the World Series, for instance, and you don’t insert yourself in the Super Bowl,” Shirley said. “If Biden does this, it will backfire on him.”
Biden painted a dire picture of the economy on Friday after a January jobs report he said showed the country on track for a 10-year-long stretch to full employment, pending stronger federal action.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday, press secretary Jen Psaki punted on who Biden favored to win the game but said he hoped to voice support for the millions of Americans still reeling from the pandemic’s economic and public health fallout.
Biden shouldn’t bother, Shirley said.
“There’s nothing he can say that will help his political situation on Sunday,” he said. “Everybody knows all about coronavirus. There’s nothing that he can say, other than everybody’s going to be vaccinated Monday, which is not going to happen.”
Biden needed to use the opportunity to pitch Americans on why he is pushing a bill that is unlikely to garner bipartisan backing, said former Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairman T.J. Rooney.
Biden needs to “forcefully reinforce” why Democrats are fast-tracking his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, despite pushback from Republicans and some centrist Democrats, he added.
“If the plan is to move quickly and without the support of Republicans, it warrants further explanation,” Rooney said.
While Biden has said repeatedly he wants Republicans to get behind his American Rescue Plan, he told 10 moderate Republicans this week that their $618 billion counterproposal would not meet the needs of a still-sputtering economy. And he endorsed the steps taken by Democrats to pass the bill bypassing the Senate’s usual 60-vote threshold.
Biden, Rooney said, “can absolutely bring the American people along when they better understand what’s at stake.”
