AP Photo Fourth Estate Hillary Clinton’s Press Conference Phobia

Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

What’s more vexing, the media's insistence that Hillary Clinton hold a press conference—which she hasn’t since December 2015—or Clinton’s refusal to accede to their demand?

To hear reporters talk about it, Clinton’s unwillingness to participate in a freewheeling but formal forum with reporters has risen to a central issue of the campaign, with everybody from the Washington Post to ABC News to New York magazine hectoring her about her press conference avoidance. Clinton isn’t having any of it, insisting at the end of May in an appearance on Jake Tapper’s CNN program The Lead that she’s made herself plenty available to the media, giving nearly 300 interviews in 2016 alone. Yes, yes, said Tapper, interviews, but how about conducting an actual press conference?


“Oh, I’m sure we will,” Clinton blithely promised, a promise that five weeks later she has still not kept.

The simple explanation for why Clinton shuns the press conference can be found in Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman’s 2014 POLITICO profile: She hates the media with a bloody passion, and maybe for good reason. Over the course of her long career, reporters have scrutinized every aspect of her professional and personal life, and the dissection has soured her. Writing in New York recently, Rebecca Traister suggested that maybe Clinton “suffers from a kind of political PTSD.” But is that really reason enough? Many politicians hate reporters and feel that they’ve been unfairly autopsied by them but still agree to press conferences. There has to be more to it than that.

The secretary’s press conference phobia would make sense if she were bad at answering questions. But she’s extremely good. You might not like her politics or the way she expresses them, but she has proved herself a competent rhetorician in the 2016 and 2008 presidential campaign debates, fielding questions and answering them competently. Likewise, she answered scores of tough, hostile and leading questions during the Benghazi hearings, exhibiting professionalism and occasional humor. Clinton “won” that encounter, wrote Slate’s Jamelle Bouie. So what makes her so fearful about conducting an hourlong session with a couple dozen reporters?

But that’s the nature of a phobia: What may look innocuous to one person can be unsettling to the phobic. A debate can often provide a comfortable forum for participants because they know the rules and the format are designed to reduce conflict and promote civility. Candidates have every right to expect debate questions to be about policy and not the personal. It’s like a game show or a big final exam for which the answers can be memorized. A debate is also a competition—candidates are often asked the same questions in serial fashion, giving them a chance to best their opponent.

Testifying at a congressional hearing may look like a hot-seat assignment, but they really aren’t for a politician like Clinton: To begin with, she can dismiss all the questions from the Republican members as foolishly partisan. Second, no matter how difficult those questions might be, she knows that relief in the form of friendly questions from Democratic committee members are forthcoming.

Clinton thinks of her Republican Capitol Hill inquisitors as idiots, and idiots who can be dismissed. But a press conference is like a minefield to her. Reporters are malicious, presumptuous beasts beneath her contempt, forever judging her and setting traps to destroy her. A press conference has no leader, no controlling authority to rule questions out of order, no policeman to hold back anarchy. The competitive pressures at a press conference are like those at a debate, only the questioners are in higher or more intense competition with one another. Journalists asking questions at a press conference hope to make news with their questions, even if the politician doesn’t answer properly. Indeed, a tough question that is dodged in a press conference can often be more newsworthy than a question adequately answered. If debates are about closure, press conference are about conflict.

This chaos brings out the worst in Clinton, who craves and thrives in more controlled environments, something she’s very aware of. Jorge Ramos unsettled Clinton with a couple of press-conference-style questions at the March 2016 Univision debate, asking repeatedly if she would drop out of the race if indicted for her email indiscretions.

“Oh, for goodness—that’s not going to happen. I’m not even answering that question,” a flustered Clinton said, as Ramos pursued her.

The Ramos line of questioning—uncommon for a debate—probably brought back to Clinton memories of of the 20-minute raking she took at the hands of the media at the March 2015 press conference she gave at the United Nations following the New York Times report that she had used a private email server while secretary of state. Clinton, who had not held a press conference in two years, gave fidgety, anxious, legalistic responses to the email questions. Evidentially, that press conference traumatized Clinton. It also damaged her presidential campaign roll-out by placing her in a combative role once again, thereby spoiling her ambitions to make a new introduction to the voting public as a “relatable” presidential candidate.

“I think at some fundamental level she’s nervous about the spontaneous give-and-take of news conferences, fearful of their potentially anarchic nature, afraid of somehow losing control,” says Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland. “Not that she should be—she’s smart and knowledgeable and good on her feet. But she clearly doesn’t enjoy the journalistic parry-and-thrust the way FDR and JFK and her husband did.”

Clinton’s press conference performances suffer because, perhaps, she takes them and everything else too seriously. Donald Trump relieves the press conference pressure by making jokes, insulting individual members of the press corps, and slaloming through questions with his brilliant non sequiturs. Clinton has fewer such arrows in her quiver, making it difficult for her to dissemble when reporter attempt to pin her down. She’s just too damn professional for her own good.

It’s hard to see her conquering her phobia: Her avoidance of the media leads 1) reporters to further distrust her, which 2) leads to more coverage that she regards as negative, which 3) confirms her bias that reporters will never give her a fair shake, so why bother?

But Clinton’s inability or unwillingness to tolerate the mundanity of a press conference speaks to a psychological weakness that is almost unprecedented in modern American politics. Even Richard Nixon, whose justifiable hatred of the media became the stuff of legend, still faced the press hounds on a regular basis. Nixon had so much confidence in his ability to direct the political agenda that he was willing to battle and sometimes defeat the media. If you can’t face down the press jackals, how can you possibly be a good president? Where is Hillary Clinton’s courage?

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