The White House Press Secretary Job Has No Job Description and No Required Qualifications
The person who speaks for the president of the United States does the job with no job description, no required qualifications and no vetting by Congress. As NPR lays it out, the role isn't designated by Congress either; it rests on nearly a century of presidential custom and tradition instead. That's the whole architecture: a podium, a press corps, and a president who decides how much you get to know. Everything else is improvisation, which is exactly what makes the credential question so revealing. The most recent press secretary found out, as NPR puts it, that you can be fired from the position just as quickly as you were hired. Katie Zacharia was fired last week. What earned her extra scrutiny was describing herself as a lawyer; it was eventually revealed that she had failed the California bar exam, which meant she was not an attorney.
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The credential is almost beside the point next to the job's real bind. Former Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told NPR that the press secretary answers to the public as well as to the president — you have to know what the president is thinking about on any policy issue, and you are also accountable to the American people. Nobody has written an exam for that, which is probably why the job doesn't come with one.
The job may be described in terms of access and accountability, but its memorable moments come from a different instinct. Sean Spicer regularly sparred with members of the media, and while being challenged about the size of the crowds at Trump's inauguration, he told reporters that 'sometimes we can disagree with the facts.' No credential — bar exam or otherwise — protects a podium from that impulse.