Joe Biden doesn't really like to meet the press

Our press-shy president.

(Joe Biden, and the media)

Joe Biden isn’t a big fan of talking to the media.

As the Washington Post noted in a story this week:

In his first two-and-a-half years as president, Biden has held fewer news conferences than his predecessors. He has given fewer interviews to major news organizations, despite his promise to restore traditional press relations after the Trump era.

The numbers are striking.

Biden has done one — ONE — interview with a daily print publication, the Associated Press.

He has held 13 solo press conferences and 17 joint press conferences (usually with another world leader) so far during his time in office. That is the lowest number since George H.W. Bush’s presidency.

He has sat for a total of 74 media interviews, the fewest since the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Compare that to his predecessor, Donald Trump, who, despite his attacks on the media, loved to talk to us. At this point in Trump’s presidency, he had held 52 news conferences and granted 273 interviews, according to the Post. (Barack Obama had done 69 press conferences and 381 interviews by this time in his presidency!)

This is, of course, strategic — in a few ways.

1. The Post notes that Biden has given far more time to influencers — YouTubers, TikTok stars and the like — than past presidents. The coverage he gets from the time he spends with these folks is almost universally positive.

2. Biden is old. (Yes, I know I have made this point before.) The White House knows this too. And they are doing everything they can to protect him from a blunder or misstatement in an interview that turns into a much bigger story.

The question then is not really why the White House is limiting press access to Biden but whether it is a successful strategy.

Let me — briefly — make the case that it is not.

Biden’s approval rating, according to poll averages kept by FiveThirtyEight, is 39.6% while his disapproval score is 53.5%.

The Real Clear Politics polling average shows Biden running effectively even with Donald Trump in general election trial heats.

On issues like the economy, immigration and foreign policy, a majority of voters disapprove of Biden’s approach.

You can, of course, argue that a) it’s early in the 2024 election b) polls at this stage are deeply unreliable and c) Biden will be running against Trump so none of this matters.

And you might be right!

But there are, increasingly, voices in the political world urging Biden (and his team) to expose him more to the press and the public than they have to date.

That drumbeat began with a Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times last month. In it, MoDo wrote of Biden:

He no longer seems a Happy Warrior. The pol who has always relished talking to people, being around people, seems sort of lonely. When he campaigned in a limited, shielded way during Covid, he was dubbed “the Man in the Basement.” But now, even without the mask, it’s as though he’s still hidden away.

He knows his staff thinks he has a problem of popping off, and I think that has made him more timid and more cloistered. And when he’s more isolated, he seems sadder, maybe because he’s not drawing energy from crowds and journalists the way he used to; perhaps his overprotective staff has gotten into his head. I know he gets frozen on Hunter questions, but he can’t hide from that forever, either.

Is his less-than-stellar inner circle undermining the boss and giving ammunition to the nasty conservative story line about how the 80-year-old president is losing it?

Biden’s more ginger gait makes Democrats flinch, but his staff reinforces the impression of a fragile chief executive by overmanaging him and white-knuckling all his appearances. By publicly treating him as though he’s not in control of his faculties, by cutting him off mid-thought as though he’s faltering and needs caretaking, they play into the hands of Trumpsters. His vulnerability becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That sentiment was picked up on by Michael LaRosa, a former spokesman for First Lady Jill Biden.

“Hang a lantern. Don't hide the ball. Turn weakness into strength,” he tweeted recently.

Then on Tuesday, came an op-ed in the Times by former Obama pollster Joel Benenson — which sounded many of these same notes, particularly about the age question.

Wrote Benenson of Biden:

The fact is, he’s old. A failure to confront the issue risks reinforcing that impression rather than overcoming it. Americans will be watching him closely in big moments, like his trip to Israel this week to deal with one of the most significant crises of his presidency. The Biden team needs to get the president out in front of the public more, finding opportunities for him to talk about age with a directness and confidence that convinces people it isn’t the core issue. Talk about it now so you aren’t talking about it next summer, then use the fall debates in 2024 to deliver a Reaganesque line that puts the topic to bed.

What’s clear, at least to me, is that — despite their assertions that it’s not an issue — Biden’s staff (in the White House and on the campaign) is acutely mindful of his age and all that goes with it. And they are shielding him from situations in which he might struggle due to this age.

This paragraph, from a broader New York Times story over the summer about Biden’s age, is illustrative of those protections:

In private, some officials acknowledge that they make what they consider reasonable accommodations not to physically tax an aging president. His staff schedules most of his public appearances between noon and 4 p.m. and leaves him alone on weekends as much as possible.

That, of course, is likely not sustainable as the 2024 campaign heats up. While Biden was largely able to campaign from close to home in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, there will be an expectation that he keeps a much more active campaign schedule this time around.

That’s especially true when you consider that Donald Trump, who, not for nothing, is 77 years old, seems dead set on making Biden’s age (and alleged infirmity) a central issue of the coming general election campaign.

“We have a man that doesn’t understand what he’s doing,” Trump said of Biden over the summer, a mantra he repeats in virtually every speech and interview he gives.

It seems unlikely then that Biden will be able to keep up his strategy of keeping public scrutiny — and the press — at arm’s length. He will have to show and prove that he is up to doing the job he is running for — and that very much includes sitting down with reporters to talk about what he’s done (and what he hasn’t) over his first term in office.

And who knows: It might actually be a winning strategy for Biden!