Why has Biden done zero press conferences so far? Some thoughts from a flyover state

Though DC is panicking, us in the Midwest feel a little differently about the new president staying off our screens

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The sky is falling! The sky is falling! In his first 50 days in office President Joe Biden has yet to call a press conference!

This past Saturday, New York Times Chief White House Correspondent and MSNBC analyst Peter Baker hopped on Twitter to inform us: “At this point in office, Trump had given five news conferences. Obama had given two, George W Bush three and Clinton five. Biden so far has given zero.”

Apparently, our former disgraced president — a.k.a the one who triggered an attempted coup, who treated the Covid pandemic like a paper cut and who cheats at golf and possibly his taxes — is five times ahead of President Biden in press availability. I had no idea, but I had not been counting.

“Biden not yet holding a formal news conference raises accountability questions,” followed an ABC News headline. “Even as the nation deals with multiple crises — a deadly pandemic and the devastating economic fallout — Biden has gone longer without facing extended questions from reporters than any of his 15 predecessors over the past 100 years,” the reporter added underneath.

On Sunday, Politico even led off its morning playbook with comment on the fact that despite the passage of the historic Covid relief bill, only one senior Biden administration official had the gumption to appear on any of the Sunday talk shows. “They’re leaving a vacuum on the Sunday shows,” said one senior producer, who called the whole thing “baffling.”

Baffling indeed. Why isn’t Biden on bended knee to the press corps yet? What could his absence mean for the pandemic, the economy, climate change and world peace? When will we get an opportunity to hear what he thinks about Meghan Markle’s accusations against the royals? And just what is thereal story regarding the infamous “biting situation” with bad dog Major?

The same weekend of all this chatter I went to the gym. Twice. Despite my quixotic effort, I’m trying. Anyway, it’s kind of a sub- community here in my little town of 5,000 in central Illinois, a place where I hear a lot of opinions. We have several Illinois State Troopers that frequent the heavier weights and they discuss more pressing matters such as wrong-way driving fatalities. “I have never had a wrong-way driver who wasn’t drunk.”

During farming season, the conversation is about too much rain or too little rain, or the time Jake’s herd of bison decided to go for a walkabout into the county’s forests. (They finally wandered home after a week.) Lately, everyone is opining over Illinois’ chances in the NCAA basketball tournament.

What I have not heard from my fellow gym rats is a collective clamor for presidential press conferences or anything political in general. Quite the opposite. Several times since the recent contentious election folks will say, “I am so sick of politics. I’m not even watching the news anymore.”

In the real world, west of the Potomac River, here in central Illinois, we know a thing or three about unaccountability. And political machines. And pay-to-play corruption. And wads of cash found in shoeboxes. But we’re cool now. Thanks to a commutation by a recently departed former president, for the first time in more than 15 years we do not have an ex-governor in prison. 

When the newly commuted former governor Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted on 17 of 20 federal charges, was released last year from a federal prison, he held a press conference (hurray!) in which he declared, “I didn’t do the things they said I did and they lied on me… I’m returning home today from a long exile as a freed political prisoner.”

Now how’s that for accountability?

Stephen J. Lyons is the author of four books of essays and journalism. His forthcoming book “West of East” will be published in March by Finishing Line Press