President Joe Biden‘s drought of one-on-one interviews with the press continues into its fourth month, even amid reports that he’s frustrated with his staff for cleaning up after his statements.
Reports surfaced earlier this week that Biden is unhappy with his team regularly explaining or contextualizing his comments, feeling that this practice undermines his “authenticity” and feeds into Republican attacks suggesting he’s not fully in command. White House spokesman Andrew Bates pushed back on those reports, saying Biden supports and approves of the clarifications before they’re released.
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“The breathlessness of graphs 1 & 2 versus the denial being relegated to graph 28 tells you what you need to know about this story,” Bates tweeted. “As we’ve said before, no clarifications of the president’s remarks are ever issued without his direct approval.”
The breathlessness of graphs 1 & 2 versus the denial being relegated to graph 28 tells you what you need to know about this story.
And as we’ve said before, no clarifications of the President’s remarks are ever issued without his direct approval. https://t.co/MPSIinfhy2 pic.twitter.com/kyx5ANQPla
— Andrew Bates (@AndrewJBates46) May 31, 2022
At the same time, the president’s relative lack of availability continues. His last sit-down interview with a member of the press came on Feb. 10, ahead of the Super Bowl, and his last extended one-on-one interviews of any kind came on Feb. 25. Those spots were with Democratic activist Brian Cohen and Boston College professor Heather Richardson. Biden has conducted press conferences and taken questions from reporters following his speeches in the weeks since.
Biden delivered a prime-time address on Thursday night, but those were prepared remarks.
Republicans have attacked the lack of access, along with Biden’s frequent vacations, as signs of a president lacking answers.
“Joe Biden is willing to frequently travel to the beach, yet refuses to do a press interview, visit the border, take responsibility for historic inflation, or do anything to lower gas prices,” said Republican National Committee spokeswoman Emma Vaughn. “Does Biden think he will find a solution for all of these crises in the sand?”
Yet even some Democrats say it’s time for Biden to be more open and that his staff is doing him a disservice if they’re trying to keep him away from cameras and microphones.
“I have no idea what happens behind the scenes, but I do think that when he makes a provocative comment, it’s good,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon. “The president should speak his mind. Americans like hearing exactly what the president is thinking.”
Throughout his first term, Biden has been dogged by claims that members of his own staff are reining him in from speaking too freely. Biden has told members of the media he’s “not supposed to answer all of these questions” and was once ushered away from reporters by a staffer dressed as the Easter Bunny.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about Biden’s availability and whether he will schedule more interviews going forward.
Though Biden is known for speaking freely when not reading from a teleprompter and has acknowledged as much by calling himself a “gaffe machine,” Bannon argues that the response from voters outside the beltway may not match the reaction within it.
“I think his staff worries about these things too much,” he said. “I think [Biden] does perfectly fine. He may have a glitch when he says something, but Americans don’t expect presidents to be superhuman, they expect them to be real people.”
While there’s always a risk of a president generating controversy on-camera, and Biden has done so with statements about defending Taiwan and how Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” conservative presidential historian Craig Shirley believes there’s a direct correlation between open presidents and successful presidents.
“Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan, they were all open with the press and seen as having successful presidencies,” said Shirley, who has written books on FDR and Reagan. “Unsuccessful ones, such as Carter, Nixon, and George W. Bush, were insular and were seen as failures.”
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Biden this week took to another tactic, penning op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, as another way to get his message to voters. Though such tactics are not uncommon, famously including Trump’s Twitter account and FDR’s Fireside Chats, Shirley says they work best when paired with regular press conferences and interviews.
“[A lack of access] is just bad all the way around. It creates a new front in a war that they don’t need,” he said. “It unifies all of the media, conservative or liberal. They all want access, and if they are shut out, it unifies all of them to look for further problems in the administration.”
