Where in the world is Joe Biden?

President Biden launched his reelection campaign recently with an unconventional video that looked like it was produced by former “West Wing” producer Aaron Sorkin. 

The video shows an invigorated Biden shaking hands and embracing Americans from across the ethnic and racial spectrum. It also features plenty of his otherwise largely invisible vice president, Kamala Harris, who doesn’t speak during the video but sure appears to love working with the president. 

Despite the campaign relaunch, there hasn’t yet been much in the way of traditional campaigning. Much like 2020, Biden has preferred to lay low and away from the stump while mostly avoiding the press. Biden kidded about his aversion to the press at the White House Correspondents dinner last week. 

“In a lot of ways, this dinner sums up my first two years in office. I’ll talk for 10 minutes, take zero questions and cheerfully walk away,” Biden said during remarks at the dinner. The massive ballroom at the Washington Hilton roared with laughter, seemingly not realizing that the president was laughing at them, not with them. 

Biden usually doesn’t have what one would call a full schedule. A recent Axios report shows a working schedule that’s generally confined to between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

In the first 120 days of this year, the commander in chief has held just four public events before 10 a.m. He’s held just a dozen public events after 6 p.m., with Axios noting that those events have been “mostly dinners and receptions with foreign leaders or fundraisers.” And including this weekend, Biden has had 13 full weekends with no public events, with almost all occurring at his home in Delaware. 

Last week, things somehow got even less busy. Per the official White House schedule, the president had zero public events on his schedule on Tuesday, one public event on Wednesday (honoring the Air Force football team), no events on Thursday and one event (hosting his Investing in America Cabinet) on Friday. 

Again, this is a sitting president who’s polling at the lowest level of his presidency, and the lowest of any of the last five presidents at this stage in their presidencies. According to Gallup, Biden stands at 37 percent approval. But here’s where there should be alarm among Democrats: His approval sits at just 31 percent among independents.

But the president’s campaign, if it can be called that, appears to be banking on the same strategy it used in 2020: lay low. Take Biden off the radar and allow Donald Trump’s various antics and legal troubles be the media’s focus. If Biden held a rally or a major news conference, that would put him back front and center, which seems to be the last thing his campaign wants.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do and I’m doing a major press conference this afternoon,” Biden told reporters at a White House meeting on Friday afternoon as they tried to ask questions. 

“So, I love you all, but I’d like to ask you to leave so we can get down to business.”

It turns out there was no major press conference coming. Instead, the president seemed to be referring to a pre-taped interview with MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour,” which can never be confused with a presidential press conference involving multiple reporters from multiple news organizations asking a range of questions on any number of important topics. But perhaps Biden forgot what a major press conference looks like: He hasn’t held in nearly six months. 

In fact, no president in the last 40 years has held fewer press conferences. Biden has held 21 in his first 27 months in office; for comparison, his old boss, Barack Obama, held 53. Biden is the most protected, least accessible president in modern times. 

And don’t expect any major press conferences soon. We could easily go another six months before that happens. His handlers seem to want a repeat of the 2020 election — where the focus is almost entirely on his opponent, and not on Biden or his record. 

The press and the American people should demand better. 

Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist.