Ever since a young, dynamic and charismatic President named John F. Kennedy realized that a televised press conferences could be a potent political weapon in talking directly to the American people and communicating substance as well as charisma, it has been a political weapon Presidents have used with varying degrees of success — including some uses of that backfired.
Is President Barack Obama now in danger of if not finding his press conferences backfire at the least a danger of diminishing returns — particularly it seems as if Obama is now rehashing some old ground and doing the press conferences on rhetorical autopilot?
You can’t say last night’s press conference was a flop, but by the reaction of much of the news media you could say that the performance got mixed reviews. And, yes, there is an irony in all of this: the news media is famous for clamoring and demanding that Presidents conduct press conferences, and in boilerplate recaps in stories will pointedly say how few press conferences President X, Y, or Z had during his long time in office.
In Obama’s case, you increasingly see reports about how MANY press conferences he has had during his short time in office.
But two of the most reliable sources for analyzing politics are giving Obama a thumbs down.
Columnist/blogger Dick Polman writes:
Obama as always is verbally deft about defining the grand stakes of a critical problem, and explaining them in relatively simple language. He did it again last night, at this crucial moment in the health care debate on Capitol Hill. But I doubt that he managed to sway skeptical lawmakers or wary citizens. Most people, by this point, have already heard him speak at length about the health care stakes, and about the dysfunction of the status quo. Saying it all again isn’t likely to move the needle his way.
… Beyond the broad goals that he has established – he wants to promote health care choice, extend coverage to roughly 97 percent of Americans, and he wants it done without adding to the deficit – what are his specific proposals for achieving those goals? He still wouldn’t say. It’s tough to rally the public around health care reform by merely saying that he awaits to see what ideas the committees come up with.
Granted, he’s in the midst of complex negotiations with Capitol Hill, and doesn’t want to show his hand. But if that’s the case, why conduct another news conference and plow old ground at great length? Health care is a tough issue to sell in a talking-head format anyway, so he might have been better off going in a totally different direction; for instance, instead of repeatedly referring to the letters he has received from citizens aggrieved about their health care, perhaps he could have read directly from those letters, or arranged to have some of those citizens share the podium – anything to put more of a human face on the issue.
Indeed, the sole moment of human spontaneity came at the end of the news conference. Obama said that the Cambridge, Mass. police had “acted stupidly” earlier this week when they arrested a famous black scholar who was trying to gain entrance to his own home. That prompted a tart presidential discourse on racial profiling. He seemed to welcome the opportunity to take on an entirely new topic, to leave behind, however briefly, his cautious rhetorical calibrations. Given the way he seemed physically stirred by the plight of Henry Louis Gates, it’s clear that the signature reform issue of his young presidency has become hazardous to his political health.
Not good for Obama: Polman picks up that Obama wants health care and is pressing it, but he’s now falling into political boilerplate — boilerplate quite familiar to most lawmakers and Americans. Without offering a new argument, or a more passionate twist that (re)frames the issue, Obama risks becoming someone whose press conferences are increasingly less a must-watch then a we’ll-watch-the-clips-on-cable-later or read-about-it-online-later.
The networks balked at running this one live – and NBC even faced a choice between Obama and Susan Boyle.
To Obama, all of this should signify this:
Yet another danger sign comes from the reaction of NBC’s first rate First Read team of Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Ali Weinberg, who called it a “Snoozer Conference.”
Last night’s primetime news conference, President Obama’s fourth since taking office, was as much a dry health-care symposium as it was a give-and-take with reporters. Honest question: Is there a point when the president knows too much about an issue? He got into the weeds a number of times on a number of different aspects of health care, which is what his diehard supporters love, but might not grab the attention of the average viewer. Still, in his opening statements and then in his answers, Obama made a direct appeal to those WITH health insurance. …. Still, he’s selling the unknown to folks with health insurance, and that’s no easy task.
AND:
There were no game-changers on the politics of the debate — or even the specifics — although Obama seemed open the idea of the millionaire surtax (do notice the number he brought up; so that means he doesn’t want the lower threshold, which was a subtle signal to Congress). Also, he used the word “mandate” and promised at least 97% of Americans covered, which would leave 9-10 million without insurance or 20% of the current 47 million uninsured (but a big chunk of those people are illegal immigrants).
AND:
But beyond those things, Obama didn’t seem he had anything new to sell. There was no new ground about what’s acceptable and what isn’t when it comes the public/government insurance option. (What happens if he has to start explaining the idea of a co-op?) There also was no new ground on his promise to reduce Medicare costs. (The White House had already rolled out its MedPac plan, but he did sell it more passionately than ever.) All of this raises the question: Did this press conference come too soon? No doubt, the White House probably thought they’d have the Senate Finance Committee bill to tout and explain by last night. Then again, he might have wanted to have a final conversation with the American public before it tunes out for the rest of the summer. (Still, maybe this presser should have happened NEXT week?) As the New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn puts it, “All I know is that Obama wanted to speak to America like adults tonight–and make the case for the reforms he (quite rightly) believes are necessary. Time will tell whether that faith in the public’s patience and judgment is well-placed.”
A PLUS: Obama did indeed want to talk to Americans as adults and he did. A MINUS: Even adults can get bored in this attention deficit society, particularly if the person talking to them is repeating what has been said and got the person’s attention by suggesting maybe this time something new would be said in a new, more compelling way.
The bottom line: Obama is skillful and is holding press conferences but he has yet to totally master the just-right balance needed between oversimplification and over explanation and how not just what he says but how he says it will come across on TV in that particular communications vehicle. He danger is less overexposure than a need to more carefully choose his press conference moments (just to shore up sagging polls on given issues won’t be enough) and offer something to viewers and the network so his future press conferences will break new news ground.
It is not coincidental that the news story that seems to be getting much play out the news conference was this new Obama comment…
UPDATE: The Washington Post’s TV columnist Tom Shales has a different reaction:
As usual, Obama turned in an admirably effective performance at the news conference, even if it did seem a little too tidy — and even rehearsed — for nearly all the reporters to fall in line and stick with the matter at hand rather than pursue their own little butterflies as in many administrations past. Obama had a list of reporters and called on each one in turn; the assembled reporters played pass-the-mike, using a rather primitive hand-held microphone to address the president and pass along questions that could hardly have been very surprising to him.
Still, viewers who sincerely wanted to know the essentials of the president’s health-care reform plan got an opportunity. Television even became an issue in the discussion, when one reporter asked if Obama had been true to his pledge that the debate on health care be available on C-SPAN, the public-affairs channels supported by the cable industry.
Obama’s use of the personal and the colloquial helped keep him from seeming pompous, as when he said many Americans are being “clobbered” by high health-care costs, and then explained the necessity for a deadline on debate and action by saying, “If you don’t set deadlines in this town, things don’t happen.”
Though polls show his popularity in slight decline, Obama did nothing at the news conference — other than preempt or delay some prime-time shows — that would seem potentially harmful to his image. About the most justifiable criticism that could likely be made: “Barack Obama still seems too good to be true.” It’s doubtful any president would lose sleep over such criticisms as that — no matter what the Cambridge police department might be saying about him Thursday morning.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.