Myrtle Beach, SC
Every White House manages a calendar. The question is whether this one managed it past the point where the public could still see the officer, and the numbers are the place to start rather than the vibe.
In three years this president has given fewer than a hundred interviews. Each of the last two presidents gave several hundred over the same stretch — Obama’s total was in the hundreds by the end of his third year and it was not close. Formal solo press conferences are down to a handful a year, the fewest of any president in decades.
Eight days ago the White House declined a Super Bowl interview for the second year running. Presidents have done that sit-down more or less routinely since the Reagan era. It is soft, it is short, it is a hundred million viewers, and it is the easiest possible venue for a man who wants to demonstrate he can hold a conversation.
I work in marketing and I will tell you what declining that looks like from inside the trade. You do not skip your friendliest platform twice unless somebody has decided the risk of an unscripted twenty minutes exceeds the value of a hundred million people watching you be normal. Nobody makes that call about a principal who is fine.
That is not proof of anything about the man. It is proof of a judgment somebody in the building has made about the man, which in some ways is better evidence, because the people making it have seen far more than we have.
So: not ordinary modern presidency. Ordinary modern is a president who uses every tool and still faces the room. This is the tools instead of the room, and the substitution is the story.
Novi, MI
A plant can automate a stamp. It cannot cancel the shift meeting for two years running and still claim the superintendent is walking the floor.
Eleven days ago a special counsel published a description of this president’s memory that the White House called inaccurate and unfair and did not call fabricated. Eight days ago the same White House turned down a Super Bowl interview for the second consecutive year — a twenty-minute conversation with a friendly network in front of the largest audience in American television.
In process terms, those two facts belong on the same chart. When the most obvious corrective action for a quality complaint is available, cheap, and refused, the refusal is data.
I want to be fair about the counter-argument, because there is one and our side keeps ignoring it. This president takes questions constantly in short bursts. Rope lines, helicopter gaggles, shouted exchanges on the tarmac. By raw count of unscripted interactions he is not hiding, and anybody who says he never answers anything is going to be handed a tally.
The distinction that survives is duration. Two minutes on a tarmac with a rotor running proves he can produce a sentence. It does not test whether he can hold a thread for half an hour, and half an hour is the actual specification for the job. A shop that will only let you inspect for ninety seconds at a time has not given you access. It has given you a sample too short to detect the defect it is worried about.
That is the pattern I would file. High frequency, low duration, deliberately. And the one long-form venue that was free, safe, and enormous was declined twice.
Orange County, CA
Orange County knows the difference between a chief executive who uses an assistant and one who cannot do the earnings call.
Here is the comparison that struck me reading the Hur report eleven days ago, and I have not seen anybody make it.
This president sat with a federal prosecutor for two days last October. Five hours of questioning, no notes, adversarial, on the record, in a matter where the answers had legal consequences. That is in the report. He did it.
And this month his office declined a twenty-minute Super Bowl interview with a friendly network, for the second year in a row.
Those two facts do not fit together in the way either side wants them to. If the man cannot handle unscripted exposure, he could not have sat for five hours with a prosecutor. If he can handle five hours with a prosecutor, there is no capacity reason to decline twenty minutes with a broadcaster.
So the access pattern is not being set by what he can do. It is being set by what somebody has decided is worth the downside, and the downside calculation is about broadcast rather than capability.
In finance we would call that an information policy rather than an operational constraint, and information policies tell you what management is afraid the market will price. What this one says is that the White House believes an unscripted long-form appearance in front of a hundred million people carries more risk than benefit for an incumbent seeking reelection.
That belief is the disclosure. It is held by people with far better information than the public has, and they are acting on it.
Not ordinary modern. Ordinary modern would take the free hundred million.
Bismarck, ND
Staff is normal. Every president has one and every president uses it.
What is not normal is the ratio. Fewer than a hundred interviews in three years against several hundred for each of the last two presidents. The fewest formal press conferences in decades. A Super Bowl sit-down declined twice.
Now run it the other way, which is the only test I trust. A Republican president, eighty-one years old, whose White House had cut interviews to a fraction of his predecessors’, who had skipped the friendliest twenty minutes on television two years running, and whose special counsel had just published a paragraph about his memory.
Would I accept “this is how the modern office works”? I would not. I would say the access policy was itself the finding and I would say it in print.
Same answer here. In compliance we treat refusal of a routine, low-cost examination as a matter requiring explanation, not because refusal proves anything but because the explanation is usually the only thing that ever gets produced. Nobody has offered one. The Super Bowl decline came with no reason at all.
So: not ordinary. Evidence that the people around him have made a judgment they are unwilling to state, and the judgment is visible in the calendar even though nobody will say it out loud.
Clermont, FL
Every operation has a manager who is out front and one who runs things from the back. Both arrangements work. What does not work is telling the customers you have the first kind when you have the second.
I consult with small firms and I would not condemn a schedule for being tight. Presidents are busy, the modern press is hostile, and the number of hours in a day has not changed since Eisenhower.
But there is a threshold, and the threshold is not the total number of minutes. It is whether the principal is ever placed in a situation he does not control.
This White House has been extremely good at high-volume, low-exposure contact. Short exchanges, controlled settings, events where the questions come from a room already on side. What has become rare almost to the point of disappearing is the long, uncontrolled conversation with somebody who is not on the team.
Eight days ago they declined one of those in front of a hundred million people, for free, for the second straight year.
That is the item I would flag on a client’s file. Not the busy calendar. The systematic absence of the one category of appearance that would settle the question, in a year when settling it is worth more to them than to anybody.
Any owner who avoids the cheapest available proof is telling you something about what he expects the proof to show.
Jacksonville, FL
Ports post a harbormaster and the harbormaster answers the radio. That is the whole standard I would apply, and I want to apply it honestly, because the strongest evidence in this file cuts against the simple version of our argument.
On the evening of the eighth, the same day the Hur report landed, this president walked into the briefing room on short notice and took questions for about fifteen minutes. Angry, unscripted, no cards, on the worst possible subject.
So the access was not zero. He can be produced, on short notice, when the building decides it needs him. That fact belongs in any honest account and it undercuts the version of this argument that says the man is being kept in a box.
Here is what happened in those fifteen minutes. He said his memory was fine, and then, describing his diplomacy on Gaza, he referred to the president of Mexico when he meant the president of Egypt.
That is the whole file in one evening. The access exists. The reason it is rationed is that when it is used, it produces the thing everybody was worried about.
So my answer is the second half, arrived at from the opposite direction than most people are taking. It is not that the public is prevented from seeing him. It is that on the rare occasions the public does see him unmanaged, the result is bad enough to explain the rationing without anybody having to admit the rationing exists.
A harbormaster who answers the radio once a quarter and gets the channel wrong is not being hidden by the port authority. He is being protected by it, and the port has quietly reorganized around the protection.
Las Vegas, NV
A house that will not put the pit boss on the floor is telling you something. But I want to be precise, because our side keeps overstating it and getting corrected.
He is on the floor. Constantly. Rope lines, tarmac shouts, a question or two off the helicopter. By raw count nobody in this White House is hiding.
What has essentially disappeared is the long hand. Sit-down interviews, formal conferences, twenty uninterrupted minutes with somebody who is not on payroll. Fewer than a hundred interviews in three years. Fewest press conferences in decades. Two Super Bowl declines in a row.
That distinction is the whole thing and it is worth getting right. Ninety seconds under a rotor proves the man is alive and can produce a sentence. Nobody doubts that. The specification for the job is not a sentence, it is a sustained line of reasoning under pressure, and the format that tests it has been removed from the calendar almost entirely.
In operations we would call that inspecting for the wrong characteristic. High frequency, wrong test, no useful data.
Whether that is ordinary modern presidency depends on what you think the office requires. If the requirement is presence, this is fine. If it is the ability to run a room for half an hour with somebody who wants to catch you out, then the country has not been shown the officer doing the job in three years, and the format that would show it has been cancelled on purpose.
I would take the second half of the question, with that fence around it.
Knoxville, TN
Staff is fine. What I would flag as a design matter is that the country has no minimum.
There is no rule requiring a president to hold press conferences. No rule requiring interviews. No rule requiring any period of unscripted public exposure at all. The entire practice rests on custom, and custom is what breaks first when a White House has a reason to want it broken.
So we have arrived at fewer than a hundred interviews in three years, the fewest formal press conferences in decades, and a second consecutive declined Super Bowl sit-down, and there is nothing anyone can point to and say a standard was violated. Nothing was violated. There is no standard.
In public works we would not accept that on a bridge. The inspection interval is written down, it is not the owner’s option, and skipping it is a finding whether or not the structure turns out to be fine.
The reform is not complicated and nobody will pass it, which is the usual condition of the useful ones. A published expectation — some minimum number of solo press conferences and long-form interviews a year — with a required public statement when a president falls below it. That regulates nothing about what he says. It converts a silent choice into a recorded one.
Right now the choice is silent, and the country is left inferring capacity from a calendar. Inference from a calendar is a poor way to run an inspection and it is the only method available, which is the answer to the question.
