PRESIDENT TAKES MOST DIFFICULT SELF ADMINISTERED TEST
Posted March 25th, 2021 at 1:45 pmNo Comments Yet
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FIRST PRESS CONFERENCE OF UNITED STATES PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN, LIVE STREAMED ON PBS YOUTUBE CHANNEL, MARCH 25, 2021 AT 10:15 PM PST.
DEMOCRACY COMPETING FOR GOVERNANCE
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
The United States President may test the waters from time to time by holding a press conference with national print and broadcast journalists.
Press Conferences are typically held at mid-day on the Eastern Seaboard so that the president and the presidential media staff can massage the message for a few hours prior to Prime Time news coverage later that evening.
Politicians tend to like press conference if the waters are lukewarm to warm. If the waters are too cold, the President lets his Chief of Staff or Press Secretary hold the press conferences thereafter. Press conferences are rarely hot as a ‘love in’ temperature for politicians, otherwise the national press is seen as just not doing their job as the Fifth Estate.
United States President Joe Biden held his first press conference as the 46th President just 65 days into his first term on March 25, 2021, a bit more than 13 minutes late.
Biden started with a 3 minute progress report with the theme of ‘help and hope’. And in case the media missed out on that theme, he specifically mentioned ‘help and hope’ as he wrapped up the statement.
Biden’s main risk during an initial press conference is making a gaff that incites parody on Saturday Night Live. An even greater risk is that the Saturday Night parody then brands his presidency for the entire term with the late night talk show lineup doing various spin offs.
Such an outcome today would be a long haul for the President, being that he still has not finished his first 100 Days in Office.
In reality though, Biden seemed to want to create more distance between what he intends to accomplish during the next four years and that of what his predecessor, President Donald Trump, may or may not have accomplished.
I AM GOING TO DEAL WITH ALL OF THOSE PROBLEMS, BUT I AM DEALING WITH PRIORITIES AS THEY COME AND LAND ON MY PLATE.
Biden continued to reject even the best of Trump’s ideas – denying the reality that even bad presidents have at least one good idea, no matter how small or ineffectual that idea might have been.
Biden was still bashing Trump as the president of deconstruction, at best referring to Trump’s imperfect reprogramming that removed Obama era programs.
The national media still figuratively see President Trump at the border wall with one hammer in his hand working diligently beside First Lady, Melania, who is helping out by holding the one nail in the presidential arsenal, as the couple try and try again as they may, throughout the Trump Administration, to build a wall on the border with Mexico, one foot at one time.
Biden continued on the theme of unification, rejecting the politics of division. The President was professing to have been ‘hired’ to solve problems, not to cause division.
Biden is not running for political office at this point in his presidency, but he is trying to maintain the moral authority that opens a lot of political doors domestically and internationally.
People work harder for a president that appears without fault.
Illegal immigration at the border with Mexico continues to plague the Whitehouse, whether a Democratic Oval Office or a Republican one. South America has fallen into such chaos that even an American inner city seems enticing, especially to the youth of Latin America.
Biden claims that the vast majority of migrants are being sent back from the border. South American migrants, numbering in the thousands and tens of thousands of people, 18 years of age or older, are being sent back home to the favelas. Biden affirmed that the vast majority of families are being sent back as well.
Biden’s main appeal at the press conference was to the American public for acceptance of his early efforts to relieve the hardships experienced by unaccompanied children reaching the border, at least until they receive due process for their formal immigration applications.
Biden stated that 70 percent of unaccompanied children arriving at the border were 16 and 17-year-olds, and ‘not babies ripped from mothers’ arms at the border, although the President did say there were some 5 and 6 year olds and some babies in mothers’ arms as well.
Biden states that his Administration is trying to get the children out of the border area camps within 72 hours of their arrival. The President cited opening 5000 beds at Fort Bliss in Texas as just one step forward.
‘I am going to deal with all of those problems, but I am going to deal with priorities as they come and land on my plate’, stated Biden (perhaps a bit out of context).
Biden states that the long term solution was to improve the conditions for the migrants back home so they would not be compelled to make the 1000 mile journey.
And that Vice President Kamala Harris has been commissioned to help improve the circumstances of migrants back home.
Today, Biden set some ground rules for press conferences of the future such that the Press were not to shout out questions. Instead, the President had a carefully selected list of journalists on whom he intended to call. The President also figuratively waived off questions that seemed to him to be ridiculous.
Whitehouse journalists are specifically assigned to Washington by their news organization, but the Oval Office preapproves access to the press conferences and who gets called on to ask a question. If the question is out of favour with the President, then there is a risk to the journalist that he/she will not get called to ask a question the next time.
The career politician side stepped the politically hot question on gun control. Americans are afforded the right to own and carry guns by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Guns of every sort are everywhere in the United States.
And so, any answer to a question on gun control is simultaneously a right and a wrong answer depending on the voter’s views on gun ownership.
Democracy was a recurring theme for the press conference with the President redirecting questions on American relations with China into a reference to the Chinese style of governance versus the American style.
Biden allegedly began a political relationship with the Chinese President Xi Jinping, before Xi was the president of China, while Biden was Vice President with the Obama Administration.
Biden states that President Xi Jinping is like Putin who believes that autocracy is the way of governing the future and that democracy cannot function in the onward approaching complex world.
China looks to lead the future with an autocratic approach to governance.
Biden said that, for example, Russia is not talking about communism anymore, and are now just talking about autocracy instead.
Washington’s approach to China is to compete with China, but also to keep China accountable in the region by making them follow the rules. Washington is part of a quad of nations that includes Australia, Japan and India.
Biden professed that timing was everything and that the next policy to be kickstarted by the administration would be infrastructure development.
Whitehouse staff had prepared a long list of statistics regarding the number of bridges and roads that needed to be repaired for the President to read out at the appropriate moment.