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Trump's Rose Garden Strategy Meets Biden's 'Less is More'

Patsy Widakuswara

   WASHINGTON - Without his signature MAGA (Make America Great Again)
   political rallies during the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. President
   Donald Trump has used White House and other events as backdrops to
   deliver his reelection pitch and launch verbal attacks on his
   presumptive 2020 rival, Joe Biden.

   This week alone, the Republican president turned a White House Rose
   Garden press conference on presidential actions to punish China into an
   hour-long multi-pronged attack on Biden. During a White House
   discussion on crime prevention, he alleged that Biden wants "open
   borders" to allow entry to the international criminal gang MS-13.
   Separately, during an event in Atlanta on infrastructure, Trump accused
   the former Democratic vice president of aiming to "tie up projects in
   red tape."

   The Biden campaign responded by tweeting the [1]candidate's plan on
   infrastructure and releasing a fact check on "Donald Trump's Record of
   Putting China First."

     During Trump's rambling press conference, Biden campaign releases
     Fact Check on "Donald Trump's Record of Putting China First"
     [2]pic.twitter.com/CDfIgYUhY3
     -- Ely Ratner (@elyratner) [3]July 14, 2020

   In the absence of Trump rallies, the president's executive orders,
   roundtable discussions and other initiatives have become de facto
   campaign events. This harnessing of the power of the American
   presidency and the reflected grandeur of the White House to elevate an
   incumbent's achievements in an election year is known as the "Rose
   Garden Strategy." The term refers to the garden outside of the Oval
   Office usually reserved for presidential ceremonies and public
   statements.

   Taking it to the next level

   The majority of past incumbents have employed the Rose Garden strategy
   to some degree in an election year, but analysts say that Trump has
   taken it to a new level.

   "If you use a press conference that's supposed to be about an official
   announcement about Hong Kong, and instead take 90 percent of the time
   to attack your political opponent - that's not the way things have been
   done in the past by previous presidents," said Norman Ornstein, a
   resident scholar at the non-profit American Enterprise Institute.

   Vanderbilt University presidential historian Thomas Schwartz said that
   Trump's Rose Garden strategy is stylistically so different than that of
   past presidents that it's "jarring." "It doesn't seem to fit into past
   presidents' manners of doing it," he added.

   In 2016, Trump ran on a platform to "drain the swamp" and "shake things
   up," and he has since repeatedly broken with presidential norms, from
   refusing to release his tax returns and set aside business interests,
   to denouncing judicial decisions he doesn't agree with. Trump's allies
   have praised the president's blunt, less filtered communication style
   as "telling it as it is" and defended his instincts to "punch back" on
   opponents.

References

   1. https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/
   2. https://t.co/CDfIgYUhY3
   3. https://twitter.com/elyratner/status/1283168352337354752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

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