Barack Obama to Journalists: No Questions

Immediate responses to every attack, journalists kept at a safe distance, fewer press conferences and more direct dialogue with Americans, using the web for public events: It’s Barack Obama’s new handbook for media relations, drafted in order to protect the president from a press perceived as aggressive.

The memo written by Dan Pfeiffer, communications director for the White House, revisits the relationship between Obama and the media from early February 2007 when, from Springfield, Illinois, he launched the campaign that would lead him to the White House. Back then, Obama feared the worst and entrusted the strict control and dissemination of campaign messages to three close associates — political guru David Axelrod, electoral architect David Plouffe and spokesman Robert Gibbs. The discipline was strict, was respected by all campaign participants and, thanks to the fact that most of the media used “hope” and “change” as their own key messages, contributed to the victory.

Having won the election, with the support of most newspapers, websites and TV networks, Obama decided to forgo that rigid approach. In 2009 he was the protagonist of a public exhibition, unprecedented for a United States president, as evidenced by a flurry of White House press conferences, 161 interviews in 12 months — more than triple the number of his predecessor, George W. Bush — and a myriad of statements, jokes, television appearances and magazine covers, from sports to music. The absence of other administration faces able to attract the attention of the general public — including the choice of a low profile by Hillary Clinton — has further increased the visibility of the president.

But the results were not what he expected because Americans have come to identify him as the person most responsible for the ongoing economic crisis, shown by an unemployment rate that has reached the 10 percent threshold. And as a result, the media have become more aggressive: The journalists accredited by the White House now harass the president and his collaborators about record deficits and bogged down health care reform, just as they did with Bush for the war in Iraq. “In press conferences, they seek visibility in order to compete with the president” said an aide to the president.* It’s in this frame that the drop in the polls for Obama has manifested itself — according to CNN he’s at a 49 percent approval rating — as well as the consequent fear by Democrats of a stinging defeat in the November congressional elections, already demonstrated with the defection of Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, who has decided not to run again, implying that the wind now blows in favor of Republicans.

To reverse the situation, the three loyalists Axelrod, Plouffe and Gibbs met several times during the week that saw Washington paralyzed by the snowstorm, entrusting to Pfeiffer the task of redrawing the image of the president by getting him as far away from the media as possible. To summarize the change, Pfeiffer said: “We will do only what we need to do, nothing more.”* Hence the reverse trend: fewer press conferences and more meetings, interviews with only the most prominent anchors in prime time — like before the Super Bowl on CBS — and orders to White House spokesman Gibbs to “react blow by blow to any Republican attack” as was done during the election campaign.*

Gibbs has adapted quickly: first he landed on “Twitter” with the nickname “PressSec” in order to instantly communicate short messages to thousands of journalists, and then he replied ferociously to the attacks received by John Brennan, counterterrorism adviser to the president, for the presumed mistakes made in the interrogation of the suspected Nigerian suicide bomber arrested in Detroit on Christmas. Also as a result of this “aggressive and focused” strategy, explains Pfeiffer, is what happened Sunday, when the White House asked for and obtained [coverage of] an interview with Vice President Joe Biden from CBS, in order to respond to the attacks from Dick Cheney that had aired shortly before that on ABC. Just a few months ago, Gibbs mocked Cheney’s attacks on “Obama’s lack of competence on national security” saying that “discussions with him ended in 2008.” But now, the new handbook doesn’t allow him to “underestimate any opponent.”*

It remains to be seen whether the methods of communication, which brought Obama to the White House in 2008, will enable him to govern in 2010 and to preserve the Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress. Plouffe believes that the strategy will work and is convinced that “in the end, every election is a choice,” and therefore by focusing all the messages against the Republicans, “It will be clear that there is no alternative to the Democrats”*; still, Pfeiffer has doubts, as he admits: “There is no communications strategy that makes 10 percent unemployment look good.”

*Editor’s note: Quotes could not be verified.