Opinion | Make Mike Pence the New White House Press Secretary
His coronavirus briefings show why the executive branch needs to bring back the daily press conference.
The location was familiar on Tuesday as well as March 6 and March 9, the incommodious James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in the White House West Wing. So too was the audience, the impatient White House press corps, seated and standing with notebooks in hand. But instead of a designated White House briefer giving the download to reporters—taking their questions and sparring with them—the duties fell primarily to Vice President Mike Pence, who acted less like the “coronavirus czar” and more like a good old-fashioned White House press secretary.
In his Brady Room performances, Pence didn’t add much substance to the infodemic, but he played the role of press secretary as if born to it. He was calm. He was direct. He was polite in face of shouted, competing questions. He deferred to the medical and policy professionals on the dais with him. He even used the press secretaries’ favorite cliché, “Let me be sure to get you an answer to that,” when asked at the March 9 presser if President Donald Trump had taken a test for the virus (a queasy looking Trump, who is on record about his chronic germophobia, had departed at about the 10-minute mark of the 45-minute session).
The idea of permanently rewarding Pence with the press secretary job for his successful execution of the duties might not appeal to everybody. It’s not even clear if becoming the new White House press secretary would be a demotion or a promotion for the vice president. He might be too busy serving the mad king and acting as de facto chief of staff to exchange hot air with a pack of journalists on a semidaily basis. But the Pence sessions reminded anybody who was paying attention how much value news consumers used to get from them, before the Trump administration turned the daily White House briefing into a misinformation event under press secretaries Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders. When Stephanie Grisham took the job, she essentially ended them.
I was never one of those critics who thought that simply because White House press briefings could turn silly, or because press secretaries could use them to spread lies, or because some reporters parlayed their time before the camera to pontificate or mount self-aggrandizing dramas (you know who you are) that the White House pressers should be eternally snuffed. Although an imperfect creation, White House pressers have done the past dozen administrations an extreme favor by placing them in a public-facing position of mental readiness to answer questions about crises, policy decisions and future plans. This has never meant that the press secretaries always toted answers to the pressers—or even made good-faith attempts to answer the questions they were asked. But the forum created a kind of public journal in which the views and positions of administrations could be pinned down and scrutinized and held as documentary evidence of a president’s conduct. It never stopped administrations from lying, but at least a record of their lies made administrations perpetually responsible for them.
This, then, is probably the reason Trump ended regular White House pressers and why we need to bring them back: When a press secretary or official briefer pronounces what government policy is across the departments and agencies, the government must in most cases abide by those policies or be forthright about abandoning or changing them when the time comes. But Trump doesn’t work that way. Ever impulsive, impetuous and instinctive, he’s like a free-range chicken who wants the run of the pasture to peck and claw wherever and whenever he wants. Press briefings restrict Trump’s love of chaos and tumult. We should be grateful that, after making his comments, he handed over the official briefing to Pence.
A January open letter by 13 former White House press secretaries put it in perfect press secretaryese: “Regular briefings also force a certain discipline on government decision making. Knowing there are briefings scheduled is a powerful incentive for administration officials to complete a policy process on time. Put another way, no presidents want their briefers to say, day after day, we haven’t figured that one out yet.”
Although Trump has made himself the most-available-to-the-press president in the history of the office, his White House driveway drive-bys with reporters have been no substitute for standard pressers. In the driveway drive-bys, Trump sets the agenda, shutting down questions he doesn’t want to explore and babbling on and boasting about subjects more appealing to his self-love. There’s no rigor, no, “I’ll get back to you,” and little edification.
In epidemic times like the ones we’re witnessing, the need for a constant and reliable source of information from the government on its policies—and when those policies have changed—has become even more essential. Based on Trump’s history, we know we can’t trust much of what comes out of his mouth. I want to trust Pence, but doubt that anyone so devoted to the president’s elephantine ego can be relied on to give the truth. But Pence’s best moments on the dais this month allow us to recall a time when expecting the government to give it to us straight about matters of life and death was not unreasonable.
For the sake of our health and peace of mind, bring back the pressers.
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Written from home, where the amenities don’t match the ones at the office. Send social distancing advice to [email protected]. My email alerts refuse to wash their hands and my Twitter feed has taken to drinking rubbing alcohol. My RSS feed died in the great CMS redesign pandemic.