Call it the Fireside podcast.
President Biden, looking for ways to advance his agenda in a disorderly media landscape, is set to revive a presidential tradition that has disappeared under his predecessor: the weekly radio speech.
The Biden version is not exactly a man and his microphone. White House press officers said that some plots could follow the traditional president-talk-to-the-people format, but that they also planned to bring Biden together with ordinary Americans and other guests, recreating the informal style of popular podcasts.
“We expect it to take a variety of forms,” said Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, on Friday.
The first installment is scheduled for this weekend and features Biden speaking to Michele Voelkert, a California woman who was fired from her job at a San Francisco-based clothing company in the early months of the pandemic.
In a remote conversation, the president and Ms. Voelkert, 47, discuss their problems with getting unemployment insurance – she ended up turning to a local state deputy for help – and finding a new job. They also talk about their daughter’s virtual schooling.
The four-minute video segment is due to be posted on Saturday on the White House’s YouTube page and other social media platforms. (Authorities said Ms. Voelkert’s husband, Joshua, was a cameraman, which allowed for high-quality footage.)
“It’s an advanced digital way of thinking about it,” said Rob Flaherty, director of digital strategy for the White House, in an interview. “We are meeting people on platforms and formats that they watch, wherever they are.”
Biden’s advisers have long cited his ease with ordinary Americans as critical to his political appeal. When the coronavirus pandemic restricted campaign events, effectively closing the rope lines where candidates shake hands and kiss babies, Biden’s strategists fought for alternatives. Among the solutions was a podcast, “Here the Deal”; the weekly presidential speech is seen in the White House as a kind of sequel.
A place where the radio address can be difficult to find: the real radio.
Even under President Barack Obama, who brought the practice to YouTube and recorded an edition almost every Friday, the weekly address saw a drop in distribution. “Is he still doing this?” an executive at a major Boston public radio station asked The Boston Globe in 2014.
President Donald J. Trump, who was not ashamed to take advantage of a range of mass media platforms, held his weekly speech when he took office. But the tradition soon disappeared. “The weekly address was not being used to its full potential,” said her press secretary at the time, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, when asked about her disappearance in 2017.
The new version of Biden is the latest in a cycle of ups and downs for presidents on the radio.
The regular address became famous for Franklin D. Roosevelt – and then it practically disappeared. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter answered questions from viewers on a national live program, “Dial-a-President”, which led to a “Saturday Night Live” parody with Dan Aykroyd playing the president. For Carter, “it diminished him,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley.
President Ronald Reagan, an experienced presenter who admired Roosevelt’s “fireplace chats”, brought radio talk back to great effect in the 1980s. His immediate successor, President George Bush, largely abandoned part of the practice, but she enjoyed a renaissance under President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush and Obama.
“It has to do with the president’s own sense of managing the aggressive pulpit,” said Timothy Naftali, presidential historian and former director of the Presidential Library and Museum Richard Nixon.
He noted that Biden, who served in the Senate from 1973 to 2009, was familiar with the potent use of a weekly speech by previous presidents. “He witnessed in the Reagan years how effective this tool can be,” said Naftali.
Biden is participating in another longtime messaging tool this weekend: an interview with a network anchor. His first television interview is scheduled to air on Sunday, before the Super Bowl, with “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell.