The primary Biden administration press briefing was refreshingly boring

The primary press briefing by Biden administration press secretary Jen Psaki highlighted how a lot modified in a single day within the White Home.

There have been no offended outbursts. No insults. No conspiracy theories pushed from the briefing room lectern. Simply civil, if largely unmemorable, exchanges with reporters.

That Psaki didn’t break a variety of coverage information is comprehensible, on condition that she simply began at her job hours earlier. What was important, nevertheless, is the method she took towards reporters.

“I’ve deep respect for the position of a free and unbiased press in our democracy, and for the position all of you play,” Psaki, who was a State Division spokesperson within the Obama years, stated in response to the primary query she fielded. “As I famous earlier, there can be moments once we disagree, and there will definitely be days the place we disagree for in depth components of the briefing even, maybe. However we now have a typical objective, which is sharing correct data with the American individuals.”

Psaki’s first briefing stood within the starkest potential distinction with the primary one held underneath President Donald Trump in January 2017.

That memorable occasion, held the day after Trump’s inauguration, was a surreal affair wherein press secretary Sean Spicer angrily denounced reporters for precisely overlaying the relative smallness of Trump’s inaugural crowd dimension.

Spicer’s outburst set the tone for the following 4 years, throughout which White Home briefings have been extra like skilled wrestling occasions than they have been good-faith efforts to tell the American public. It typically felt like their objective was to placed on a spectacle the place White Home officers asserted dominance over reporters.

Psaki appears poised to make the briefings extra like they have been within the Obama years, when, for higher or worse, most of the people hardly ever took discover.

Whereas Psaki took pains to keep away from rebuking Trump or any of the 4 press secretaries who labored for him, she did allude to the unhappy state of press relations throughout these years by promising to convey “fact and transparency again to the briefing room.” Many of the questions she fielded on Wednesday got here from reporters who requested her about Biden’s plans or what her method to being press secretary could be, however she did at one level reply artfully to a query from a Fox Information reporter who requested her a number one query about whether or not President Joe Biden ought to discourage the Senate from holding a second impeachment trial for Trump now that he’s out of workplace.

“The Senate may multitask,” she stated, arguing that senators may maintain a trial whereas nonetheless addressing the urgent issues dealing with the American individuals.

None of that is to deify Psaki, who, in spite of everything, labored for an Obama administration that had poor relationships with many members of the press corps. Not all of her press briefings would be the sunshine and rainbows affairs that Wednesday’s was. However for an evening, at the least, the uneventfulness of a White Home press secretary’s interactions with reporters felt like one thing to have fun.