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A Politico examination of Joe Biden's communications strategy wound up generating a bit of a flap Monday, after Senator John Cornyn used it to smear the president for having boring tweets and therefore not being sufficiently in charge of things. Political scientist Dave Hopkins helpfully pointed out that the original story had some real substance, in particular on the differences between how Biden and Barack Obama handled spin.
That's true as far as it goes … but it doesn't go very far. In the grand scheme of things, White House communications strategy might be one of the most overanalyzed and overrated aspects of U.S. politics.
To begin with, the presidency itself is overrated. Yes, the president is the most important elected official. But Congress, collectively, is nearly as important. The courts are important. The executive-branch bureaucracy is important. Political parties. Interest groups. Even the media.
And within the presidency, communications strategy just isn't that big a deal. It moves few votes. It probably has little effect on the president's popularity. It's likely a minor factor in passing legislation. What a president says matters, but how the administration goes about spreading the word? Much less so.
It's certainly less important than, say, how the president organizes the White House. Biden has returned to the Republican model of a strong chief of staff and aides with fixed, clear responsibilities. It's a style that Dwight Eisenhower invented and all subsequent Republicans until Donald Trump followed, and one that Democrats from John F. Kennedy through Bill Clinton tried to avoid, only to gradually turn to it after their attempts to find a better model failed. Obama was the first Democrat to use the Republican model. Biden is the second.
Nor is communications strategy as important as choices in policy personnel. Dan Drezner has a good piece out about how Biden's economic team differs from previous ones. That's essential stuff, with major consequences. The same can be said for personnel decisions in foreign and national-security policy, as well as other domestic policy areas.
The point is, we get lots of reporting about communications strategy for two reasons: because the people doing the reporting find the topic interesting, and because in many cases the people pitching these stories as important are good at working the press (after all, it's their job). Just something to keep in mind as these stories roll around.
1. Julia Azari on threats to U.S. democracy.
2. Timothy Frye at the Monkey Cage on public opinion in Russia.
3. My Bloomberg Opinion colleagues Ramesh Ponnuru and Michael R. Strain debate child allowances.
4. Greg Sargent on corporate political action and the Georgia election law.
5. Will Wilkinson on Republicans and the fraud of voter fraud.
6. Julian Sanchez on vaccination passports.
7. Interesting speculation from Michelle Goldberg on the culture of the Biden boom.
8. And Philip Klein on innumeracy in vaccine reporting. There's a lot of blame to go around here. In addition to some non-specialists in the media doing a bad job, there was nonsense from the outgoing Trump administration, muddled messages from the Biden administration and seemingly paternalistic talk from public-health folks who seemed afraid of accidentally spreading good news. The result? Far more confusion than necessary, and perhaps some missed opportunities to persuade reluctant people to get their shots.
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