one of my earliest criticisms of the bush administration, was president bush's avoidance of press conferences. he did some pro-forma joint appearances with world leaders, but in his first year of office he held only four solo press conferences. and that's all he held in 2002 and 2003 as well. in 2004 he held five, a grand total of 17 solo press conferences in his entire first term. bush's lack of willingness to speak to the press used to drive me crazy. it really bothered me that the president wasn't willing to take questions about his actions. it struck me as both arrogant and anti-democratic.
my occasional rants about that issue mostly predated this blog. but it did come up tangentially in a couple of early posts. then i stopped fuming about it, partly because i got used to it, partly because bush held a few more during his second term and partly because critics of the president started finding more of a voice notwithstanding the relative dearth of formal press conferences.
obama has already held four press conferences since he was elected, three were just this week (and it's a short week). he's already has as many as president bush did in his entire first year. it's really great to have a president who is simply open to take questions.
this isn't really a feather in obama's cap as much as a testament to how bad bush was. there shouldn't be anything remarkable about a president being questioned by the press.
