Democrats’ questions are not answers to problems

Bill Cotterell
| Capitol Column

Sending questions to radio stations selected for interviews with President Joe Biden was a clumsy move by Democratic campaign staff, but it looks much worse than it actually was.

Perhaps Biden’s team simply assumed that broadcasters in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin wouldn’t tell anyone to throw soft balls at the president.

Perhaps his press office team didn’t feel the broadcasters needed to be told that these were merely suggestions, not a return favor for 30 minutes with the big man.

It is not uncommon for TV cameras and writers to line up so that a candidate can go from microphone to microphone in a series of “exclusive” interviews with locals. All the news organizations want him on the air or on their pages, and the much-abused word “exclusive” is irresistible.

The president’s criticism was probably intended to help some local reporters who are good at talking to the mayor, police chief or union leader, but who aren’t so good at covering national affairs when they’re suddenly offered an interview with the leader of the free world.

I’ve been a reporter since 1966, and I can’t imagine how many times a candidate or PR person has said, “Hey, we’d like to talk about the education plan,” or maybe, “If you ask him about that hurricane insurance bill, you might get a good story.” Sometimes it’s a good tip about something I didn’t know, other times it’s self-promotion.

I then decide whether to ask the question and whether the answer is newsworthy.

That is not unusual. What is inappropriate is that a scripted dialogue is presented as a spontaneous, candid discussion.

After his clumsy, disoriented performance during last month’s 90-minute debate with former President Donald Trump, Biden needed to show that he could have a clear conversation, that he knew what was on his mind and that he could fight back in a political confrontation.

So the re-election campaign sent questions to a radio station in Philadelphia and a commentator in Wisconsin, whose show airs on 20 radio stations in the state.

Andrea Lawful-Sanders, host of “The Source” on WURD in Philadelphia, said she was given eight questions and used four of them in her interview with Biden. She later left the station, which said the arrangement violated journalistic standards. Wisconsin broadcaster Earl Ingram told the Associated Press that he gave Biden four suggested questions, though he had to think twice when he got them from Washington.

“I probably would never have accepted it, but this was an opportunity to talk to the president of the United States,” Ingram candidly told the Associated Press.

That’s clearly what the campaign wanted when some local commentators got a call from the White House. Biden’s campaign insisted it hadn’t made the questions mandatory, but said it wouldn’t do so again.

This little case of what game wardens call “hunting in a baited field” came at the worst possible time for both Biden and the news media.

It reinforces the perception that the president, at 81, can no longer think on his feet and must be coached through staged publicity events disguised as news interviews. And that the news media is colluding with the Democrats.

The Washington press was already engaged in an embarrassing self-examination over its reporting on Biden’s health.

For months, friendly columnists and TV commentators believed that Biden was like his 1967 Corvette: old, but classic and well-maintained. When The Wall Street Journal ran a story on June 4 about friends and aides who worried about Biden’s fitness, the paper was fiercely attacked for distancing itself from the “nothing to see here” narrative.

And then the man himself did everything but show up in his bathrobe and slippers and fall asleep 20 minutes into the debate. Richard Nixon’s sweaty brow and wandering eyes in 1960 were deft stagecraft compared to Biden’s bewilderment. Gerald Ford insisting that there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe in 1976 was masterful statesmanship compared to Biden’s mutterings about how “we finally defeated Medicare.”

Hell hath no fury like a fooled press, and so the backlash was swift and furious. Commentators who a week earlier would have dismissed any mention of Biden’s condition as “ageism” intolerance jumped on the new “Biden the Bewildered” storyline with glee.

If Biden stays in the race, he will face a Washington media establishment that is far less gullible.

Bill Cotterell is a retired Capitol reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. He writes a weekly column for The News Service of Florida and City & State Florida. He can be reached at [email protected].

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