On the menu today: Politico offers a blistering review of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre after her first month on the job, but I would argue she’s been given an impossible task — to convince reporters and the country that President Biden and his administration are doing a good job. Elsewhere, Biden argues that the high cost of gas is the price Americans are willing to pay in order to oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — an argument that seems more likely to undermine than to galvanize American support for Ukraine. Finally, have you noticed that most late-night talk-show guest lists are looking like the lineup of speakers for a Democratic National Convention?
It’s Not Really Karine Jean-Pierre’s Fault
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been in her job for a month, and this morning Politico offers an unexpectedly scathing early review:
It’s been a rocky first month for White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Her answers have baffled reporters, and even made some of her White House colleagues wince. She has increasingly found herself sharing the podium or splitting briefings with John Kirby, who has been taking the lead on foreign policy and at times appears to function as a co-press secretary. . . .
In her first 10 briefings as press secretary, Jean-Pierre said she didn’t have the information being sought 20-plus times more than predecessor Jen Psaki in her first 10 briefings, according to a review of the transcripts by West Wing Playbook.
And while White House reporters love to complain about non-answers from communications officials, many have privately grumbled that when Jean-Pierre does have answers, they are often vague and rarely stray from the pre-written talking points prepared in the binder at the podium.
“At a certain point it wouldn’t surprise me if people started voting with their feet,” one White House reporter told POLITICO, predicting the lack of news from the briefings could result in waning attendance of reporters.
Jean-Pierre isn’t good at her job, but in what is likely the mildest defense of her you’ll ever see, she’s not the source of the administration’s overall troubles. When it comes to the White House’s problems, she’s low tire pressure on a jalopy that is on fire and has parts falling off. It’s not that she doesn’t have good answers to reporters’ questions; it is that the entire Biden administration doesn’t have good answers to the country’s problems.
Just what is Jean-Pierre supposed to say?
The president keeps making promises he can’t keep. The administration’s plan on inflation is to hope the Fed’s interest-rate hikes are enough and to call for tax increases that Congress was always unlikely to pass, particularly in an election year. At least once a month, a new update to the Consumer Price Index comes along, showcasing that the president’s efforts to tackle inflation aren’t working; the next one arrives July 13. The administration’s response to runaway gas prices is to ask OPEC members to produce more, but apparently those countries are near their maximum production capacity. When Biden took office his administration was effectively greeted by a surge of illegal immigrants attempting to cross the southern border, and the administration has failed to stem the tide for a year and a half. (A Democratic city-council member from Allentown, Pa., speaking to the New York Times recently: “Look what’s going on in the country today. . . . It started with the border. I think it’s the most pressing problem we’re facing today. . . . Let’s get an immigration policy in place. What other countries allow what we do? It’s crazy.”)
For two months, the Biden administration knew that the Supreme Court was likely to overturn Roe v. Wade. Here’s Reuters:
The White House is unlikely to take up the bold steps to protect women’s right to have an abortion that Democratic lawmakers have called for in recent days, interviews with officials show. . . .
Protecting abortion rights is a top issue for women Democrats, Reuters polling shows. The White House, which misjudged when the ruling would be issued, is still not meeting the moment on the issue, some health experts and Democrats complain.
“The White House had a month, if not a year, to plan for this and they should have really come out with a major white paper plan of action the moment Dobbs was announced,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University and faculty director of its Institute for National and Global Health Law. “The impression is that the White House is leading from behind, that they were caught flat footed.”
You keep seeing those descriptions: “Flat-footed.” “Caught off guard.” “Slow to react.” “Slow-moving.”
Why is this administration so perpetually slow to respond and to move? If you’ve been reading this newsletter regularly, you know my theory. Most days, unless Biden is at a foreign summit, he does only one public event a day, and he spends almost every weekend in Delaware (with a chunk of Fridays and Mondays) — because at his age that’s all he has the energy to handle. He turns 80 later this year. Most men that age are living lives of relative leisure, not trying to run the executive branch of the federal government, an unending task that’s exhausting even for much younger men. In any administration, the most valuable and finite resource is the president’s time — and because of his age, Biden probably has fewer peak-performance hours in a day than most other presidents.
At the beginning of the month, Edward-Isaac Dovere of CNN shared what seems like a very revealing quote from an unnamed White House aide:
At the center is a president still trying to calibrate himself to the office. The country is pulling itself apart, pandemic infections keep coming, inflation keeps rising, a new crisis on top of new crisis arrives daily and Biden can’t see a way to address that while also being the looser, happier, more sympathetic, lovingly Onion-parody inspiring, aviator-wearing, vanilla chip cone-licking guy — an image that was the core of why he got elected in the first place.
“He has to speak to very serious things,” explained one White House aide, “and you can’t do that getting ice cream.”
Yes, and a lot of Biden’s image from 2019 through last year was shaped by those anodyne images of him eating ice-cream cones. As Kyle Smith quipped, “The media have developed a curious idea that every time Joe Biden has ice cream, it constitutes news.” If you can project your persona successfully only when the atmosphere around you is the breezy, carefree fun of an afternoon on summer vacation, you probably shouldn’t pursue the job of commander in chief. The presidency is a tough job even in the best of times, and the country is enduring challenging times right now. Biden is just in over his head.
That isn’t Karine Jean-Pierre’s fault, and there’s not much she can say to spin that hard truth.
A Likely Counterproductive Argument on High Gas Prices and Ukraine
This week Biden is in Europe, and to his credit, he hasn’t had one of those eye-popping “did he just say that?” moments, like his off-the-cuff declaration a few months ago that Vladimir Putin cannot remain in power.
But earlier this month, Biden argued that the exorbitant price of gas — down about 15 cents per gallon in the past two weeks, but still averaging $4.85 per gallon nationally — was a price Americans had to pay for the defense of Ukraine from Russian aggression: “We cut off Russian oil into the United States, and our partners in Europe did the same, knowing that we would see higher gas prices. We could have turned a blind eye to Putin’s murderous ways, and the price of gas wouldn’t have spiked the way it has.”
Does framing the argument that way make Americans more supportive of the effort to repel Russia in Ukraine? Or does it make Americans think, “Wait, I hate Putin and Russia’s invasion, but when this started, no one told me I would be paying nearly five bucks a gallon for the foreseeable future.”
ADDENDUM: I almost never watch late-night talk shows anymore, which means I hadn’t realized that political figures and elected officials are now an almost nightly feature on Stephen Colbert’s program. Colbert and his staff are free to book whichever guests they want, but I’m left wondering if anyone beyond the lawmakers themselves really enjoys this new politico-heavy guest list. Back in the Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, and early David Letterman days, the guests on late-night talk shows were generally — yes, I know there were exceptions — movie stars promoting their latest film, prime-time TV stars, musicians, comedians. Johnny Carson would often have some animal expert on, and almost inevitably the animal would pee on the stage, and his sidekick Ed McMahon would laugh so hard you would think he would lose bladder control, too. Maybe that tickles your funny bone, maybe it doesn’t, but that brand of humor didn’t automatically repel any right-of-center viewers.
Now Colbert’s audience can expect to see him talking to the likes of Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker, and Nancy Pelosi, who usually get softball questions on the issue of the day and answer with extremely familiar talking points. How much fun is everyone having?