Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from producer Ben Johansen. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Myah | Email Lauren| Email Lawrence The Oval Office is not an inherently natural place to give a speech. There’s camera and teleprompter equipment surrounding you. Behind them, staff and pool reporters are filling the room to the gills. It can get hot when it’s that cramped. There is something stuffy about it. It is an extraordinary setting, but an awkward one too. After all, you're sitting at a desk and what are you supposed to do with your hands? “It can be a challenging setting because most presidents don’t give speeches sitting down,” said former Obama White House press secretary ROBERT GIBBS. “There’s a little bit of awkwardness in that.” Even for skilled orators, it can be a lot to overcome. Few presidents have been able to use the room effectively since RONALD REAGAN. The former actor was one of the rare presidents to actually seem somewhat natural behind the desk, giving 29 primetime Oval Office speeches over the course of his presidency. BARACK OBAMA only gave three Oval Office addresses during his entire presidency, preferring other White House venues like Cross Hall, where he chose to announce that the U.S. had killed OSAMA BIN LADEN in 2011. When he tried to make a 2015 Oval Office speech a bit more comfortable by standing at a podium instead of sitting at the Resolute Desk, he was widely mocked. DONALD TRUMP, who also felt stiff and uncomfortable in the setting, gave two primetime speeches from the Oval. The room has obvious drawbacks that push presidents to select other speech venues. But there’s no getting around the fact that when the White House wants to convey a sense of gravity and urgency, few locations can help accomplish that goal in the same way. “It’s awkward. It’s stilted. It doesn’t have the visual impact, or the emotional impact that it did under Reagan,” said JEFF SHESOL, a speechwriter for then-President BILL CLINTON who went on to found the consulting firm West Wing Writers. “At the same time, it is a signal to the media and to the public: ‘Hey, this is really important. I don’t do this a lot. And I want your attention when you would probably rather be watching the baseball playoffs or something else.’” That was part of the thinking that went into the White House’s decision on where President JOE BIDEN should give his Thursday evening speech on the Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel and the war in Ukraine. It will be just his second formal Oval Office address since taking office. Biden had initially planned to give a speech urging Congress to approve more funding for Ukraine, but the timing of that address was pushed back in the wake of conflict in Israel and Palestine. It quickly became clear to White House officials that Biden would have to broaden his address. A senior White House official said that Biden felt it was important to communicate directly with the public about what was at stake abroad and to acknowledge how painful the recent global events have been for many Americans. In sum, it was the right moment to use the Oval. It was also important to the White House to get the big networks to cut into their prime-time programming to take the president’s speech live, which is not always an easy sell. CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS all plan to interrupt their programming to take the president’s speech live. Even Fox News is preempting its 8 p.m. opinion hour for coverage of Biden’s address, according to network spokespeople. “Even though the audiences are a fraction of what they were 20 years ago, nationally televised addresses remain one of the best ways for a president to reach a broad swath of the public simultaneously,” said former Obama senior strategist, DAN PFEIFFER. MESSAGE US — Are you VINAY REDDY, director of speechwriting? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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