Dem
51
GOP
49
Because Joe Biden isn't. Oh, he will probably watch the Super Bowl this weekend, either at the White House or at his residence in Delaware. After all, we hear he's a huge Taylor Swift fan. However, for the second year in a row, he has declined to sit for the pre-Super Bowl presidential interview that has become "traditional" in the last decade or so.
Normally, a politician is thrilled to get access to millions of voters, free of charge. So, why isn't Biden champing at the bit? The official explanation from the White House is that politics fatigue is a real phenomenon, and that there are many people who become resentful when the allegedly apolitical world of sports is infringed upon by political considerations. The administration thinks that it's going to be difficult to do much good this far out from the election, but that by crashing the Super Bowl party, Biden '24 might do itself some harm.
We do not disagree with this assessment, but we also suspect it's not the full story. Biden, of course, doesn't do great interviews, and he sits for considerably fewer of them than most presidents. Further, there are a number of touchy issues that are currently on the radar. He would surely get some tough-to-nearly-unanswerable questions about Israel and/or the border. One can understand a desire to avoid such questions until those situations have matured a bit more.
Of course, Donald Trump never met a PR opportunity he didn't like. And so, he's already volunteered to take Biden's place, promising it will be "RATINGS GOLD!" We have news for you, Donald—the Super Bowl is ratings gold with or without you. It does not appear that CBS is going to take Trump up on the offer, which is really too bad, because he rarely sits for interviews outside of ultra-friendly, softball-tossing right-wing media outlets. He only made the offer yesterday, though, so there is still time for the CBS bigwigs to change their minds. (Z)