COMMENTARY | President Barack Obama made prime time with his "60 Minutes" interview with Steve Kroft. It almost makes you forget how few press conferences he's had during his first term in office. Is he scared of the media outside of the one-on-one interview? Or is here merely following a trend adopted by presidents over the years?
"Whatever the specific questions, it's clear that Obama doesn't love the cattle-call milieu and feels a lot less comfortable in front of a crowd of reporters," write Glenn Thrush and Julie Mason in their Politico article "Obama Gives First Press Conference in 3 Months."
So he's not dodging the media, but is he really ducking the outings which involve unscripted questions flying from a variety of reporters?
"Since taking office, Obama has done 13 full-on solo White House news conferences, as opposed to the so-called two-and-two sessions with foreign leaders, in which each country's press corps is allocated a pair of questions. Obama's rate is better than the eight solo pressers during the same period for former President George W. Bush - but far fewer than the 23 convened by former President Bill Clinton and the 44 by George Bush the elder, according to records compiled by [Towson University Political Science Professor Martha Joynt] Kumar," as noted in Thrush and Mason's Politico story .
Why has Obama held fewer press conferences than Clinton and Bush Sr.? Kumar tells Thrush and Mason that it's because Professor Obama gives long responses to short questions (as many do in my profession). But that wouldn't explain why Bush Jr. gave fewer press conferences than even Bush Jr. for the same time period. Additionally, why wouldn't the scholarly Obama do the same for a single interviewer?
In fact, Obama has given many one-on-one interviews in his career. "Through April 30, Obama sat for no fewer than 306 press interviews - one every few days on average. During the same period in their presidencies, George W. Bush did 91, Clinton 139 and George H. W. Bush at least 87, though records for him are incomplete," noted Thrush and Mason in their Politico piece.
Press conferences are less scripted and less predictable, of course. But the 1:1 interview is really just that: a confrontation between one journalist and one subject. There's no 40:1 ratio. The subject can point out inconsistencies in the interviewer's questions, as Obama did with Kroft as the reporter seemed to forget that he had accused the president not compromising at all with Republicans, when he chided the president for compromising too much with the GOP later in the interview. In a press conference, reporters have few chances to contradict themselves or make a similar gaffe. Even when one stumbles, the other 39 are still out there to, waiting for their chance to one-up the President of the United States.
It's not just Obama either. According to the data from the White House Press Office, I have found that Hoover gave an average of 67 a year, while FDR averaged 83 a year for his 12 years in office. Truman only have about half as many as Roosevelt, and Eisenhower's rate was only a little more than half of Truman's. Since Nixon, the number of press conferences has been below 20 per year, with most presidents having fewer press conferences in their entire term than Hoover gave in a year, with George W. Bush having the fewest per year. So many it isn't just Obama. All presidents seem to be increasingly hiding from the media pack, if not the interviewer.
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