Joe Biden has an attention problem.
The president and his team have never aimed to dominate the news cycle in the style of his predecessor and likely 2024 challenger, Donald Trump. They’ve often been happy to take a policy win — taking Social Security cuts off the board in debt limit talks, for instance — over keeping a weapon in hand to hammer the GOP with. Other times, they’ve been happy to let an increasingly authoritarian and chaotic GOP alienate the electorate without interference. Biden generally avoids one-on-one interviews, which his team views as providing little upside but containing high risk for gaffes.
As Biden opens the calendar year of his reelection, the downsides of this strategy may be coming into view: The president, who is essentially tied with Trump nationally and often trails the Republican in polls of key swing states, has left little to no impression with less-engaged voting blocs, including young people, voters who didn’t cast ballots in the 2022…