Since this isn’t Frost/Nixon or even Couric/Palin, each questioner is given very limited time in which to ask their single (often multi-part) question. My expectation is that every question probes to relevant matters of the day, and enables the President’s reaction to be news, no matter what.

Obviously, approaching press conferences this way can lead to an opposite equally-frustrating game – verbal gotcha. This is no more or less useful than pee-wee league questions.

But there is a middle ground between soft-pitch press conferences and verbal gotcha. People like David Plotz (Slate) and Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) seem to navigate this space very effectively. When I read/listen to/watch them, they ignore verbal games in favor of assessing intellectual honesty. I think this is where Zeleny’s question falls down.

To take Olivier’s point, the President will almost always have ample room to fall back to talking points. However, his response to an effective question should be news, no matter what. I would have loved to ask President Obama to specifically address an obvious inconsistency; for example, at some point he said X (say, that cutting $18 Bln in pork is an insignificant drop in the budget bucket), and now he’s saying Y (say, saying $17 Bln in budget cuts/savings is quite significant). Even a non-answer would itself give us a lot of information about the President and the administration.

With that rubric – strong questions ellicit a news-worthy answer, no matter what – my gut reaction to Zeleny’s type of question is that it seems somewhat lazy. I don’t need to go to J-school, study political science, or even follow American politics, to ask that question. (For the sake of this discussion, I’m ignoring the spotlight and difficulty of even asking questions in that context. They are professionals, after all.) There’s a lot of fodder for probing questions challenging intellectual honesty.

Olivier, I think your example of John Dickerson proves that. No matter what Bush said, even if it was boilerplate, his answer would be interesting because it reflects a reaction (official or not) to a real-world situation.

Thinking about Prof. Dickinson’s original post, this is where I fall on the “newsworthiness” question. Every question should force the President to show us his (one day, her) thinking more clearly.

All that said, to Prof. Dry’s point, there may be real tactical value in Zeleny’s approach: President Obama is very good at deflecting direct questions, unlike his direct predecessor and like President Clinton. An open-ended question may allow for an honest and less-guarded response. It’s like a 3-pointer – higher-risk, higher-reward.

Anyway, I thought I’d (finally) chime in, once the dust settled a little.