Like a certain Prince Hamlet of Shakespearean renown, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who took the oath of office today, will now proceed “to take up arms against a sea of troubles, and so opposing, end them”.
Or at least that’s the theory. President Biden will have his work cut out for him, particularly on the communications front.
A sea of troubles he certainly must contend with, and it will not be enough to devise aggressive new policies to suppress the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, lower the unemployment rate, tackle climate change and reduce the widespread use of excessive force by police officers. Making these policies work in practice will require an exceptionally robust approach to communications by President Biden and his new administration.
One hundred years ago, public intellectuals and pundits lauded the arrival of the ‘Age of Mass Communication’. New technologies such as motion pictures, radio, and television would, they argued confidently, would greatly improve the scope and reach of political leaders’ efforts to communicate with the public.
The mayors, legislators, and presidents of the 20th century would be able to reach all of their constituents, no matter how isolated, providing a clean break from the slow dissemination of ideas of earlier times, when the speed of news was limited by the pace of the horse-mounted courier. Broader communications would facilitate the implementation of enlightened policies to bring electricity, vaccinations, clean water, and new transportation infrastructure to the masses.
For a long while, the pundits of the 1910s and 1920s who heralded the age of mass communications appeared to be right. Radio and film welded together the U.S. public during the Great Depression and World War II in ways earlier generations could not have imagined. Mass communication lay at the heart of President Roosevelt’s New Deal program successes and victory in the global war. The same technologies supported both democracies and repressive regimes the world over.
This state of affairs lasted up until the mid-1990s, when the Internet and cable television changed everything. The Internet’s main effect has been to re-fragment the public in new and often confounding ways. Cable television has homogenized tastes in some respects and pulled it apart in others where entertainment is concerned. But in the realm of politics, cable television and the Internet together have promoted and accelerated class, regional and ideological polarization.
For any presidential administration, communicating to a distracted and divided American public would constitute a huge challenge. In the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic and myriad crises, the challenge is further amplified. Where COVID-19 is concerned, the key danger for President Biden and the country is that the large portions of the public will either ignore or resist sound policy guidance because Mr. Biden is either unable to reach the public, or to convince enough of them that his proposed course of action is correct.
Communications failures may occur because the public is directing its attention elsewhere (a hypothesis I call “amused to Death” given over the 600 cable TV channels with regular viewers among the American public) or because their preferred news sources are engaged in an ideological struggle so complete and unrelenting that they will oppose even the most sensible policy initiatives to score rhetorical points.
Former President Trump was able to come to grips with the challenge of a fragmented public through his use of Twitter. Social media was a means to both bypass hostile parts of the media ecosystem to reach his voters, as well as a way to garner attention and notoriety as a means of expanding his base and targeting non-voters who subscribed to Twitter. Whatever one can say about Mr. Trump, he is a genius at using social media to market himself and stir up emotions.
Mr. Biden has not shown a similar interest in social media to bypass the media establishment, which may partly be because large parts of said establishment are broadly supportive of Mr. Biden’s agenda. The rival conservative media establishment, however, certainly is not supportive of him, but Mr. Biden does not seem inclined to reach out to Mr. Trump’s voters through social media in an attempt to convince them to give him a chance to prove himself to them.
The pandemic is raging. The stakes are high, and the time is short.
How should President Biden engage with the American public in his first 100 days in office?
Greymantle’s advice: Bring back the Presidential press conference.
Though most members of the public may have forgotten about this now-quaint practice, when Greymantle was growing up in the 1980s, Presidential press conferences were both frequent and well-watched events. President Reagan excelled at holding press conferences, where he was often put in the position of fielding tough questions from hostile reporters.
Reagan was genial and unflappable. He never got angry. He was never rude or hostile. And the public ate it up. President Reagan’s landslide 1984 reelection victory was one for the history books, and was largely made possible by Reagan’s talent as a speaker – hence is nickname, ‘the Great Communicator’.
What were his preferred modes of communication? The prime time TV address to the nation, and the Presidential press conference.
I probably watched two dozen of those press conferences as a kid, and I can attest to their unique quality that was at parts entertainment, a briefing from the commander-in-chief, a high-minded news release, and a relaxed chat between the President and members of the press. There is no doubt in my mind that those press conferences helped to turn many dyed in the wool Democrats into ‘Reagan Democrats’.
Presidents Bush (Sr.) and Clinton were also masters of the Presidential press conference and televised address. I can recall President Bush’s press conferences in the lead-up to and during the first Gulf War vividly. The nation hung on every word of the President. When Mr. Clinton was in office, his press conferences and public statements in response to the 1993 Midwest Floods and 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing were dynamic mass events etched into the consciousness of millions.
And then something changed.
In my opinion, a shift occurred in 2001 with the accession to power of President George Bush (Jr.). The younger Mr. Bush was a much less effective communicator than the three presidents who preceded him, and was also lacking in self-confidence. He often seemed unprepared and would become testy and annoyed with the White House press corps. By the start of his second term, the press conferences grew rare and the atmospherics declined into a pall of hostility and mistrust.
That condition never really lifted, not even when President Obama succeeded Mr. Bush in 2009. Even though the press corps were generally less hostile to Mr. Obama than they had been to Mr. Bush, the rise of the conservative media counter-establishment assured by 2009 that there would be a growing number of press critical of Mr. Obama in the room. The quality of the questions put to the President seemed to deteriorate.
By 2011, President Obama’s press conferences were becoming rare events. Obama was much less apt to give televised addresses to the nation than most of his recent successors. Mr. Obama is a fine speaker, so I am not really sure why this was the case. I suspect that one of the reasons may have been growing racial tensions in the country. Mr. Obama’s media advisors may have advised him to make fewer televised appearances – they reminded certain segments of the public who did not care for him or his policy positions that he was Black. But I have no way of knowing whether this is true or just an offbeat theory of my own.
As to President Trump…he has never been much of a silvery-tongued speaker, and his coronavirus briefings in the spring of 2020 give one a pretty good idea of how he would have performed at regular press briefings.
Not well.
Which brings us to the present time and to Mr. Biden. President Biden’s greatest gifts may be his sincerity and his ability to convey heartfelt empathy. These qualities will serve him very well if he chooses to take the route of direct communication with the American people in a time of multiple national crises.
Greymantle’s advice: Start holding monthly press conferences. All the networks will cover them. Fox News, too. Even OANN will be there. And there print media as well. Make them work for you the way Reagan’s press conferences worked for him. Flip a few hostile Republican voters into “Biden Republicans”.
When Ronald Reagan was first elected in 1980, many members of the press and the public alike thought his positions were outside the mainstream, and that he was a potentially dangerous public figure. While some of the first charge was true, Reagan dispelled the second charge over the nation’s airwaves with his charm and genial charisma.
It’s January 2021 and between 35 and 40 million Americans believe – because of a hideous lie – that Mr. Biden stole the 2020 election and is not their legitimate President. Opposition voters are seething with fear and resentment. The COVID-19 virus stalks the land. People are deeply anxious and seeking comfort, reassurance and empathy.
Mr. Biden can effectively respond to these emotions by getting in the White House briefing room, maybe with Dr. Anthony Fauci at his side, and taking a few questions from reporters. He won’t get angry. Just by being himself, I believe he can dispel some of the dark clouds hanging over us and begin bringing our divided nation closer together.
Until next time —
I am Greymantle
