A president cocooned from skeptical and even disrespectful questioning would be intolerable—an affront to the country. But an East Room theatrical, with the correspondents done up in their dress-for-TV best, is not the only alternative. There’s no reason why a president’s obligation to explain himself couldn’t be met with a series of town halls or, better, a weekly sitdown with a rotation of intelligent and knowledgeable interviewers like John Dickerson, Chris Wallace, and a bunch of people we’ve never heard of. As it is, the presidential press conference serves mostly as certification ceremony: The reporters get camera time, a chance to show off their expertise—some questions last more than a minute—and an accreditation as a personage to be reckoned with. They may even get recognized while weighing their fresh kale at Whole Foods. It’s not the president’s job to make the press corps feel important.

A Washington without presidential press conferences is a Washington in which the grip of the establishment press has at last begun to loosen. The same goes for the equally worthless daily briefing held in the White House press room by a political appointee whose most important job is not to answer serious questions. Anyone who has sat through these interminable exercises knows that whatever information they transmit could better be explained at a lower bureaucratic level—let the flack for the Bureau of Labor Statistics release the unemployment numbers to labor reporters, who know more about the matter anyway. (President Trump would still think the numbers were rigged, but that’s another story.)

And then, after the White House briefings and news conferences are done away with, here’s what could go next: the State of the Union address, a televised pseudo-event, beneficial (and interesting) only to the reporters who cover it. SOTU, as it’s cloyingly called, could vanish for a century with no discernible damage to the functioning of self-government.