Keller @ Large: Lack of presidential exposure a plus for Biden
BOSTON - As President Biden, struggles to improve on poor job approval ratings that rarely break out of the low 40s, there's one bright spot in an otherwise bleak polling landscape:
Asked in a new CBS News/YouGov poll if they like Biden personally, 59 percent of voters under 30 say yes, a much higher number than approve of his job performance. Same deal with Hispanic voters. And overall, personal likeability is one of the few areas where Biden breaks even.
What's going on?
Remember the old proverb: absence makes the heart grow fonder.
"The less people see of Biden, the more they seem to like him," says Boston University Associate Professor emeritus Tobe Berkovitz, an expert in political communication. And it does seem as if the White House strategy when it comes to presidential exposure to media questions is -- less is more.
In his first two years as president, Barack Obama gave 275 media interviews. Donald Trump gave 202. But Biden? Just 54 through last year's midterms, many of them with non-hard-news outlets.
And the average annual number of full-scale press conferences held by every president since 1989 is at least double Biden's output so far.
Is that a smart move?
"From the White House perspective, absolutely," says Berkovitz. "With Biden, they try to do a photo op, but keeping him in control once he gets out there, that's the problem, so the solution is, don't let him get out there."
Biden's gaffes are the stuff of political legend, but is speaking off the cuff ever to his benefit?
Between his own track record and the insistence of his critics that he's barely able to function, the bar is often so low for Biden that he's able to clear it easily. I can think of a couple of marathon press conferences where he's performed well, and the spontaneous give and take with Republicans during the State of the Union speech worked fine for him also.
But look for the White House to continue to pick his spots carefully. You know the old saying - always leave them wanting more.
