Psaki bomb

Despite this, Psaki enjoys the evident respect of the press corps, which is the sine qua non of her job. This, likewise, cannot be reduced to ideology. Are the press in the tank for Democrats? Of course. But that doesn’t mean they’re in the tank for this Democrat. Biden-critical stories do better numbers than Biden hagiography, even if a healthy share of eyeballs comes from the frenetic hate-clicking of media-gourmandizing liberals. Kremlinology makes for easy copy.

Now, media bias certainly shows up in the slack cut for Psaki when it comes to answering for her boss. As the president has become more remote, the burden of availability has fallen on Psaki. This forces Psaki to be as conspicuous as any of her recent predecessors, or more so. Her gestures, verbal crutches, appearance, and penchant for tense-shifting evasions are scrutinized closely. Her noxious digital praise chorus, in which the activist and online Left pretend unconvincingly that her dissembling is heroic, is small compensation.

Then there is Twitter junkie and chief of staff Ron Klain. Klain is a media obsessive, and one suspects that Psaki works overtime to balance the needs of a famished press corps, Klain’s distractedness, and a president pulling a Polydectes, turning to stone in his moment of truth.

Klain’s Twitter habit is a liability and must give Psaki fits. Here he is, sharing brain-melting hogwash from the Washington Post’s Jen Rubin. There he is, liking and retweeting criticisms of the White House he runs or the negotiating approach of Senate Democrats he needs to persuade. The man is unfocused and conspicuously so, a whirlwind of gesture and impulse.

Klain is off-message, Biden is invisible, and Psaki has to bear the load.

The administration’s incompetence presents further burdens. Unlike Obama, Biden lacks the votes for a transformational, liberal agenda. Unlike Clinton, Biden lacks the political and rhetorical (and one suspects intellectual) dexterity to pivot and triangulate. The best Biden could hope for, then, is a muddle.

The best way to package a muddle, at least during the Obama years, was to wrap it in the competence-bespeaking signifiers of the professional-managerial class. But in the wake of COVID and Afghanistan and inflation, with containerships dotting the entries to America’s ports like a fleet of prison hulks, could any approach to public communication be more noxious than the put-upon superciliousness of our feckless bureaucrats? Even among poor choices, that is, Psaki is deficient.

Psaki’s problems are bigger than a matter of tone, although mocking the supply-chain crisis by dismissing it as “the tragedy of the treadmill that’s delayed” was cringeworthy. And they are bigger than simply not telling the truth, such as defending Biden’s claim that he has visited the border by recalling that Biden drove by it on the campaign trail exactly 13 years ago. Yes, Psaki has parroted administration lies, perhaps none more grotesque than repeatedly lowballing the number of Americans trapped in Afghanistan. But no White House ever picked a press secretary for a blind commitment to the truth.

Take Afghanistan. Recall that the task of a communicator is to convey persuasive ideas to the public by way of the media. Establish a clear goal. Mark out metrics of success. Contain internal divisions in the administration so leaks and side discussions don’t develop. Walk the press through a narrative trajectory that ends with the White House hanging a proverbial “W” on the board.

Counterintuitive as it might seem, the administration has some communications wins under its belt, the Afghanistan withdrawal, although a disaster, temporarily among them. The White House established a clear goal, set a new timeline, and did a remarkable job of preventing leaks even as numerous voices were apparently expressing major concern internally about the withdrawal. Indeed, leaving Kabul was a communications triumph right up until the moment the harebrained scheme was implemented.

Then, of course, the Taliban got a say. The withdrawal turned into a rout. Men were filmed falling to their deaths from airplanes. Thirteen American service members were butchered by the Islamic State. And the White House simply failed to react, then killed a random family in a return strike intended to show strength. The absent center became apparent. Psaki was forced to rationalize failure without acknowledging it as such. She was asked to come up with a new narrative trajectory on the fly. And then the next day, another.

We were told to focus on the raw number of evacuees, never mind that many had no business being exfiltrated from Afghanistan. We were told every American who wanted to leave would be withdrawn. We were told that the Taliban were making credible commitments to change their relationship with the international community. The farcical chain of excuses, elisions, and self-pity may have fatally undercut Biden’s presidency. But it also, and more importantly, exposed why Psaki is struggling.

Every press secretary becomes an avatar for the White House. But as a practical matter, the podium jockey thrown before the media is more tugboat than strategist. The great oceangoing vessel in this analogy is the White House’s attempt to move the American government forward, toward the endpoint of its political priorities, while retaining or gaining legitimacy for future projects in the eyes of the public.

Psaki finds herself, like so many tugboats around American ports today, with no clear destination for the freight. The big ship does not know where it wants to go, but it cannot stand still. Worse yet, it appears to be listing. Still, the greater challenge is beneath the surface: The shoals are shifting constantly.

Here, I think, we get to the nub of the problem for Psaki, and likely for all future press secretaries.

The position of press secretary was created by Herbert Hoover, and it fit his moment so well that, even as Hoover’s brand of industrial capitalism with Progressive characteristics collapsed under the reputational onslaught of the Great Depression, his staffing innovation survived. It survived because the media landscape remained consolidated for nearly 90 years, even as radio, television, and cable rose in successive waves of innovation.

However, sometime after Barack Obama’s first election, the internet reached a stage of development that it became a centrifugal engine, spinning media and messaging outward at a high rate of speed, disincorporating pat narratives into their component parts. Audiences shrank and have become more autonomous. No media company enjoys a megaphone big enough to check a presidency in its tracks, but the press have become a sufficiently fragmented bunch that they cannot be herded.

Yet the press secretary is forced by convention to remain in an outmoded way of operating. When Psaki engages with Fox News’s Peter Doocy, she does so to elevate him as the conservative voice and define the terms of the disagreement between the White House and the GOP. Her hive of admirers screech their approval, and the conservative internet whirs with activity. The conversation is, for a moment, gloriously structured. The terms of the debate are clear. In a previous era, this would have constituted winning the day. Pull three of those in a five-day span, and that’s winning the week.

Without a daylong news cycle, with the press playing follow the spontaneously generated online leader, the old mode doesn’t work anymore. Evidence of disingenuousness appears almost instantly, but a fragmented media can’t force the White House to confront adverse outcomes. Efforts at generating viral content are quickly forgotten or, as in the case of influencer Benny Drama’s self-deprecating video about a hapless White House intern named Cooper, become fodder for ridicule.

In short, the press secretary needs the press corps, but the press corps is going feral. Even as individual reporters and outlets come increasingly to resemble the explicitly partisan mouthpieces of 19th-century American journalism, the press corps as a whole has become entirely unmanageable.

Combine a policy muddle with a press rabble, and it should be no surprise that Psaki is falling back on the assured tone deployed by Obama’s capable communications team for years. Events are moving faster than the administration can communicate. That’s not likely to change, for this president or his successors.

Luke Thompson is a Republican political consultant based in Baltimore.