Obama's soft-media strategy
By: Byron Tau and Dylan Byers
August 17, 2012 03:33 PM EDT
Forget Chris Matthews — he’ll take Nancy O’Dell.
President Barack Obama has been taking a lot of questions in the two months since his last press conference or national news interview. He’s just been doing them with ESPN, Entertainment Tonight, People Magazine and FM radio stations around the country, mostly to talk local sports and regional cuisine.[/color]
(PHOTOS: Politicians on SNL — sort of)
This isn’t a mistake. Even at the height of a campaign in which they’ve been firing hard at Mitt Romney and trying to keep hold of the news cycle, Obama’s reelection staffers are pretty sure most voters aren’t tuning in.
“People get their news in many different ways,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki told POLITICO. “Sometimes it’s turning on ‘Entertainment Tonight’ and seeing what the latest news is out there.”
Psaki said the president will be doing a variety of media appearances in the coming weeks with both national and local outlets, but for now, “We’re reaching an audience that may not be paying attention to the day-to-day political back and forth.”
That also lets them avoid the back-and-forth with the national press corps for much lighter outlets. Friday, Obama was behind closed doors at the White House to cap off a week in which Mitt Romney announced his running mate and Obama’s own vice president lit up controversy. But he was on the air: Obama called in to a New Mexico morning radio show to weigh in on “Call Me Maybe,” his favorite work-out songs and his ideal super power (he chose speaking any foreign language, though “the whole flying thing is pretty good”). The exchange ended with one co-host Kiki Garcia giggling, “I just flirted with the President of the United States of America.”
Obama’s not the only one. Romney has been more available recently — including two news conferences just this week — but before that had done only one since May. He even spurned U.S. reporters in favor of a British press availability on his recent overseas trip. And the day after he tapped Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, the GOP ticket (and their wives) gave the first sit-down interview to … People magazine.
(VIDEO: Romney breaks out whiteboard at presser)
Obama himself has often complained about the media’s focus on trivialities over substance. But the anti-Beltway press sentiment is one that Obama himself has echoed on the trail, saying that the concerns of the national press corps and the the American people are wildly different.
“What the American people hear and what the press corps want to focus on are two very different things,” Obama told “Entertainment Tonight,” about ongoing questions regarding Vice President Joe Biden’s controversial quip about Republicans putting Americans back in “chains.”
Obama points to his failure to communicate as one of the single largest problems of his presidency, but media exposure has always proved tricky for him. In 2008, he was clearly helped, despite the knocks — including the famous “celebrity” ad from John McCain — from making stops like Ellen and Oprah a regular part of his routine. Even then, though, he was chided for giving an October 2008 interview to Mario Lopez on “Extra,” after a month without a press conference. And in 2009, his media handlers yanked him back in the face of withering criticism that he’d overexposed himself and the presidency in a way that was bad for the presidency and bad politics too.
But now, Republican strategists say no matter how frustrating Obama’s national media freeze-out is, it’s smart.
“I think just think it comes down to their overall strategy, which is to be low risk, to play it safe. They feel like they’re ahead and there’s no need to put the president in a position where he makes a mistake,” said former George W. Bush spokesman Trent Duffy, a founding partner of public affairs group HDMK. “They feel like they’ve got it won, and Romney’s got to do something dramatic.”
The press corps cares a great deal, but that’s not the constituency either campaign is courting.
“You have a category of voter that is watching ‘Entertainment Tonight’ and reading People that are not exposed to the cable news shows, are not high-intensity New York Times or POLITICO readers,” Steve Schmidt, chief strategist on McCain’s 2008 campaign, told POLITICO. “The one thing the Obama camp knows for sure, while there’s a lot of griping among the press, the public doesn’t care.”
The decision to grant interviews to People and “Entertainment Tonight” after eight weeks without a news conference is proving to be a slight even the most high-profile, fair-minded White House reporters are not willing to suffer privately.
“I hate the fact that they have made me worry more about access than reporting. Why build a press briefing room if the president isn’t going to brief the press?” NBC News chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd told POLITICO, who said the White House’s disregard for the press has “reached a new low.” “Both campaigns say the press doesn’t cover them seriously. But the more they cordon us off, the harder it is for us to report on the issues.”
ABC News chief White House correspondent Jake Tapper made his frustrations with the White House known in a terse blog post hammering home how much time has elapsed since the president’s last presser.
“I know that defenders of the president will say the White House press corps is just being whiny. But the bottom line is presidents set precedents,” Tapper told POLITICO. “So President Romney, or Ryan, or whomever the next Republican president will be, will be able to use President Obama as a benchmark. And today’s defenders of today’s president may not find tomorrow’s president’s avoidance of questions not about chili or fave songs as acceptable.”
Indeed, Obama has held half as many availabilities as his two most recent predecessors at this point in the year of their reelection campaigns, according to data provided by Towson professor and presidential scholar Martha Joynt Kumar. At the same point in their reelection campaign, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton had held 17 and 16 pressers, respectively. Obama has held just eight.
Obama’s campaign swing across Iowa this week is a case study in his low-risk, low-stakes media strategy. Obama spoke with Carlos, Kiki and Danny on KOB-FM, Big Ken and Colleen on Star 102.5, People magazine, “Entertainment Tonight” and a handful of local newspapers. (One local newspaper reporter filed a story about how exciting it was to ask Obama a question — without transcribing the answer to the question). In July, he sat for interviews with 35 outlets — 26 of which were local TV stations, newspapers or radio outlets, according to data provided by CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller.
Obama has even declined an interview with the friendliest liberal outlet on television. Earlier this month, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd sat down with Mitt Romney for a one-on-one interview that will be featured in an hourlong MSNBC documentary that will air prior to the Republican convention. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who has been very public about his support for Obama, was not granted an interview with the president for the network’s Obama documentary, which will run prior to the Democratic convention. The White House offered Biden instead.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Obama campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt defended the president, pointing out that he has been available for “dozens of questions each week on the campaign trail” from local media outlets.
“He’s certainly given press conferences, and he’ll do them again. But that’s not to say that an interview in Cleveland, Ohio, with the television station there isn’t just as important,” LaBolt said.
When pressed by Mitchell on whether Obama would give a national news conference “where he could be asked questions on all subjects by those who cover it full time,” LaBolt once again cited his interviews with local media and a recent CBS interview.
“I’ll take that as a ‘No,’” Mitchell replied.
On Thursday, the Republican National Committee took a playful jab at Obama, reminding voters what the world looked like the last time the president gave a news conference. “Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were together,” “Lebron James had still not won an NBA Championship,” and the like.
“From the tone of the campaign to his lack of plans on Medicare, it’s clear Obama is avoiding tough interviews that will help get Americans the answers they deserve,” RNC spokeswoman Kristen Kukowski told POLITICO.
But for all the kvetching about the issue from Republicans and reporters, White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest rebuffed reporters on Friday who were pressing for information on when they’d get a chance to question the president again, arguing Obama’s been talking to “reporters from a wide range of outlets.”
”I don’t have any announcements to make in terms of what kind of timing,” Earnest said. “The president has spent a lot of time answering questions from journalists all across the country.”
“The White House should be admonished for not answering questions, but it’s not going to affect behavior,” Schmidt said. “The public is seeing him answer questions on ‘Entertainment Tonight,’ seeing snippets of his speeches on the evening news, so the notion that he’s not accessible doesn’t make sense to them.”
“The public doesn’t care because the message from both parties has been, ‘Don’t trust the media,’” Todd said. “With both campaigns trashing the press, 90 percent of the country is being told that they can’t trust us. Obama and Romney have no problem with that.”
“The problem is, if you protect these guys too much, they’re more likely to make gaffes. If you expose them more, no one gaffe stands out,” he went on. “So this strategy only serves to raise the profile of the limited access they give.”
© 2012 POLITICO LLC
