The President Again Tries to Right the Ship

With the coun­try shaken by the blood­shed in Par­is, nervous about at­tacks at home, and con­cerned about an in­flux of refugees from the Middle East, many pres­id­ents would take to the air­waves for a prime-time ad­dress to re­as­sure an anxious na­tion. But that is not Pres­id­ent Obama’s pre­ferred way to use the bully pul­pit.

In­stead, after a week out of the coun­try and out of sight for most Amer­ic­ans, Obama on Tues­day used his third press con­fer­ence in eight days to per­suade Amer­ic­ans it is safe to fol­low their daily routines and to re­as­sert his com­mand of the war against ter­ror­ism.

Bask­ing in praise from vis­it­ing French Pres­id­ent Fran­cois Hol­lande, who stood at an ad­join­ing lectern in the East Room, the Amer­ic­an pres­id­ent found him­self play­ing catch-up in the wake of the mul­tiple as­saults in Par­is and the rising in­tens­ity of the polit­ic­al cri­ti­cism com­ing from Re­pub­lic­ans on the cam­paign trail. So it was not sur­pris­ing that Obama pre­faced his open­ing state­ment by ex­plain­ing that it “will be a little longer than usu­al. I have been trav­el­ing, and this is an im­port­ant mo­ment for our na­tions and for the world.”

He eas­ily could have ad­ded: It is also an im­port­ant mo­ment for his pres­id­ency and his leg­acy.

It is un­usu­al for any pres­id­ent to use so many press con­fer­ences in such a short time to try to right the ship. And the ex­er­cise did not start out aus­pi­ciously for him. His meet­ing with re­port­ers in An­t­a­lya, Tur­key, on Nov. 16 was widely panned, as most crit­ics saw a de­fens­ive and testy pres­id­ent. By the time he next took ques­tions six days later, the pres­id­ent had more than found his equi­lib­ri­um.

Meet­ing re­port­ers in Ku­ala Lum­pur on Sunday, he was sure-footed and al­most elo­quent, talk­ing of the “beau­ti­ful, won­der­ful lives” lost in Par­is, flex­ing the muscle of a 65-na­tion co­ali­tion, and ap­peal­ing to the na­tion to rise above “pre­ju­dice and dis­crim­in­a­tion.” His theme was power­ful: “We do not suc­cumb to fear.” That, he said, is “the primary power that these ter­ror­ists have over us. They can­not strike a mor­tal blow against the United States, or against France. … But they can make people fear­ful. And that’s un­der­stand­able. …”

The big prob­lem for the White House is that al­most nobody in the United States saw this more con­fid­ent pres­id­ent—the press con­fer­ence took place 9,500 miles and 13 time zones away in Malay­sia. It was 1 a.m. on a week­end in Wash­ing­ton when the pres­id­ent spoke.

So Tues­day’s press con­fer­ence was the pres­id­ent’s third at­tempt to get it right, to ex­plain why his ap­proach to de­feat­ing the Is­lam­ic State ter­ror­ists is the way to go. That he op­ted against a prime-time ad­dress is not sur­pris­ing. Ac­cord­ing to num­bers kept by pres­id­en­tial his­tor­i­an Martha Joynt Ku­mar of Towson Uni­versity, it has been a year since his last prime-time ad­dress to the na­tion. That came on Nov. 20, 2014 from the Cross Hall of the White House, and dealt with im­mig­ra­tion.

“He can use oth­er for­ums, such as 60 Minutes, where he has a large audi­ence, par­tic­u­larly if he does it in the foot­ball sea­son,” said Ku­mar. Also, she noted, us­ing a morn­ing press con­fer­ence al­lows him to reach an in­ter­na­tion­al audi­ence out­side of the United States, where there are doubts about the al­lied strategy against IS­IS as well. “He will be seen in Europe in the early even­ing, and they wanted to reach that audi­ence as well,” ad­ded Ku­mar. “Since he is the lead­er of the co­ali­tion of al­lies, he needs to speak to that audi­ence as well as the Amer­ic­an one that is keen to hear from him now that he is in the United States.”

George Ed­wards III, pres­id­en­tial schol­ar at Texas A&M Uni­versity, told Na­tion­al Journ­al he is not sur­prised that Obama shunned the flashy prime-time show in this in­stance. “The pres­id­ent knows what works. He is not go­ing to con­vince a lot of people go­ing on prime time. There would be high ex­pect­a­tions and low im­pact.” Prime time is more con­du­cive for pres­id­ents try­ing to sell spe­cif­ic ac­tions.

“Here, the pres­id­ent doesn’t have a dra­mat­ic plan to of­fer,” said Ed­wards. “He is not go­ing to an­nounce he is send­ing the 82nd Air­borne in to clear out IS­IS. He is not go­ing to an­nounce that, so it would be pretty in­cre­ment­al stuff, and that is more dif­fi­cult to ex­plain.”

But Ed­wards said the pres­id­ent still needs to find a bet­ter way to rally sup­port for his an­ti­ter­ror­ism policy and to ad­dress a na­tion rattled by the Par­is at­tacks. “Re­as­sur­ance is use­ful, and that’s what people are look­ing for right now re­gard­ing ter­ror­ism,” he said. “They are nervous. They are skit­tish. And they are look­ing for re­as­sur­ance. I don’t think it would hurt him to of­fer the re­as­sur­ance of how the gov­ern­ment is pro­tect­ing its people.”

And neither press con­fer­ences in Tur­key and Ku­ala Lum­pur in the dark of the night nor one in Wash­ing­ton be­fore noon reached big enough audi­ences to truly an­swer the ques­tions about the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s re­sponse to Par­is. So the White House is left with the daunt­ing chal­lenge of find­ing more ways to talk louder than the anti-Obama ca­co­phony com­ing from the Re­pub­lic­an cam­paigns, and to an­swer the quieter ques­tions of so many Amer­ic­ans.